The Crash

After the dust had settled, Don opened his eyes and spied a tiny caterpillar just a few inches from his right cheek, almost hanging in mid-air as it was busily gnawing on a thin blade of grass that was bending slightly under the weight of the beast. You could almost hear it chewing in the silence that had fallen since the crash. Don sat and stared at it for a few seconds, and then made a face as if to mimic the caterpillar’s chewing - partly, I figure, to check to see that he was still alive, and partly to enjoy the simple things in life that people briefly re-discover after a near-death experience.

Most people would have assumed, and rightly so, that we had been out drinking again and in a fit of poor judgment decided to get in a vehicle and make it go – but this was not the case. What had been the case was that we were kinda checking out some ass on the way to a team building experience that our boss, in his infinite wisdom, forced us to go to. We really had no business going to this event in the first place, as everyone who sat within ear-shot of Don and myself had already made up their mind about whether they could stand working with us or not. Ordinarily, we might have downed a pint of liquor in the parking lot before-hand, and then followed some other poor bastard out to their car so that they could drive us to the event, all the while making obnoxious jokes and sounds, and seeing who could sound the most like Sam Kinnison. Don’s natural drunk voice was a cross between Jeff Foxworthy and Sam Kinnison, so he had an advantage in this area, but I could usually mimic him well enough to get him in trouble on conference calls and such, from time to time. But this is all beside the point, because as I said before, we were not drinking at all that day – we were checking out ass.

Ass comes in many shapes and sizes, and while the debate rages on over what the perfect ass looks like you can pretty much count on most guys to have the exact same reaction when confronted with a given ass. On the affirmative, the guy will either make a shortened ‘m’ sound, or potentially even go as far as to say ‘damn’, but this is rare and is also a call for any other guys in the area to stop what they are doing and have a gander as well, because it’s just that good. It’s a bonding thing. Conversely, on the negative a typical guy will usually stifle a kind of gagging sound, which is difficult to describe but often heard, while averting their eyes – sometimes going as far as to actually shield their eyes with one hand, just in case. Occasionally, there will be a negative of epic proportions at which point the guy will temporarily lose control of his diaphragm and utter a rather louder sound that is either similar to a retching noise, or, if he is more experienced, ‘Oh Gawd’. This is also, contrary to what you might think, a call for other guys in the vicinity to drop what they are doing to experience this with you. Again, it’s a bonding thing. Don’t ask. There are no asses in the middle. It’s a simple yes or no question.

Don was an ‘Oh Gawd’-er because he was more experienced at this than I was. He was also thrilled by the recent development of women taking to putting their names across their backs or butts on sweats because it made identifying and pointing out the ass in question much easier than in a normal girl-group situation. Plus, if you ever felt the urge to compliment someone on their derrier, it made that easier too. ‘Hey Williams!!!’ (pause) ‘Nice ass!!!’

Just kidding, he never did that - at least not with the windows rolled down anyway. Don probably thought it unusual that so many of the girls were named either ‘Juicy’ or ‘Pink’ though – speaking of which, why would you want the word ‘Juicy’ across your ass anyway? That’s just. So. Wrong.

So anyhow, where were we… O right, we were on our way to said team building event, listening to Jimmie Rodgers on the stereo (because we’re freaks) and checking out ass:

Me: ‘Abercrombie.’
Don: ‘m.’ *pause*
Stereo: ‘Um gonna buuuuy me a shotgun,’
Don: ‘Blondie there.’
Me: ‘Damn.’
Stereo: ‘Just as looooooong as I’m tall…’
Don: ‘What?’
Me: ‘Forrester, in the red there.’
Don: ‘Damn.’
Stereo: ‘Gonna buy me a shotgun,’

And this went on pretty much the whole trip, as we toodled down the road, until we came upon something that we did not entirely expect to be possible.

Me: ‘Juicy.’
Don: ‘m’.
Don (shielding his eyes): ‘O Gawd!’
Me (looking over): ‘What, I, *retch*, ack!’
Me (thinking quickly): ‘With her, or that big green one we saw a minute ago?’
Don (grimacing at the thought, but you have to answer –it’s the rule): ‘Green-ey’.
Me (laughing): ugh.
Don: ‘In grey, up ahead’.
Me: ‘I don’t see – ‘
Don: ‘Well, we’ll have to get closer to be sure.’
Me: ‘Oh there…’
Me: *pause*
Don: *pause*

And we paused there, at length, as if we were two yokels trying to make out the meaning of a Picasso painting, and we got closer and closer to the ass in question, but neither one of us said anything or took our eyes off it. It wasn’t a good ass, but it wasn’t a bad ass either. It was set dead-square in the middle, not bony or fat, not shapely but with shape, not huge and not small, and in fact there was absolutely nothing remarkable about it at all, except to say that it did indeed exist somewhere under those grey sweatpants, and upon discovering what can only be assumed to be the one ‘middle-of-the-road’ ass in the entire world, our brains simply stopped functioning as they went into an endless loop of analysis paralysis and

Don: ‘STAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWPPPP!!!!!’

Cue slow motion. I have had numerous near-death experiences before (almost drowning, nearly being hit by a train, motorcycle vs. Mack truck, etc.) and the one constant between them all is that the world seems to slow down for the duration of the experience. The world has now slowed down, which means that I am about to die unless I do something, so here goes…

I hear Don shout, and tear my face away from the ass dilemma to assess the situation. We are traveling about 50 MPH, and there is a line of stopped cars in front of us at what appears to be approximately 10 feet away (though I am sure it was really farther). I have a suspicion that it would be futile to hit the brakes at this point, and I doubt I could even touch the brake pedal before impact. I have to swerve, either into oncoming traffic or the shoulder. I’ll pick the shoulder. It might not be wide enough for the car, and I am not sure what lies beyond it because my eyes can’t see that far that fast, but all in all it sounds like a better plan than the oncoming traffic. And time begins to speed up. . .

WA-ZIZZZZZ!!! We managed to swerve fast enough to avoid hitting the car in front of us, and we were even in the shoulder, briefly, but apparently there was a lot of loose gravel or something in said shoulder which caused a total failure of traction because as I straightened out from the swerve our vehicle continued drifting slowly sideways, and we left the shoulder at the speed of still 50 mph, were momentarily airborne, and then began to descend and bottom out in a near perfect fashion in a canal which was beyond the shoulder of the road by a few feet, running parallel to it.

The car crunched perfectly into the rather narrow canal – like a slot car running on a track really, and we zoomed along the canal floor rather grandly as I stood on the brakes, and Jimmie was howling the whole way too:

Don: ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!’
Stereo: ‘Gunna buy me a pistol…’
Don: ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!’
Stereo: ‘With a big long shiny barrel…’
Don: ‘AAAAHHH!!!!’

We ultimately stopped a few feet short of a metal underpass pipe, and I reached over and turned off the stereo; the caterpillar chewed, and then Don made his chewing face, and then we assessed the situation. The canal was luckily empty, as the sides rose slightly above the roof of the car and had it been full we would have been unable to open the doors (because they butted up against the sides of the canal within a few inches either way), and the water surely would have shorted out the electrical system causing the sun roof to be inaccessible. Picture two guys slowly drowning as they frantically tried to position themselves in such a way as to kick through a windshield or sunroof from the inside of a car. Haha.. Fortunately, this did not happen, though we did have to climb out the sun roof to escape our current situation – which as it turns out had not gone entirely unnoticed by the rest of the motoring community, leaving us to sit on the roof of the car smiling and waving at everyone who had stopped to gawk and ask stupid questions while leaning out their windows like ‘Hao’d yoo doo thay-at?!?’

You would think that this embarrassment would be enough for one day, but alas, remember the ass-in-question that caused this whole mess? Well, it decided to walk over to see how we were doing:

Ass-in-question: ‘Hao’d yoo doo thay-at?!?’
Don (recovered now, and in his best Sam Kinnison voice): ‘Well, you SEE, ‘
Me (cutting Don off, so we don’t end up in jail): ‘We were just looking for, uh, free parking.’
Don (nodding): ‘Free parking.’
Ass-in-question (slowly): ‘Are you guys, uh, feeling ok?’
Me (looking at Don): ‘Oh sure, it’s all good. We’re fine. Everything’s fine. Are you fine?’
Don: ‘Yup! Just fine!’

And the ass-in-question waves and walks away.

Me: ‘I think that one’s a ‘no’ for me.’
Don: ‘Yeah, it’s a no. The lighting must have been bad before.’
Me: ‘It’s not that bad, but I mean, no where near as good as Juicy was.’
Don: ‘Kind of saggy, really. I mean –‘
Cop: ‘Sir, step off the car please.’

Let me take a little break here to give you some background on my experiences to-date with the po po. Actually, they can be summed up quite simply: I never get away with anything. Nothing, nada, zip. I have tried various answers to the ‘do you know why I pulled you over, son?’ question, and none of them have ever caused an incident to end in a favorable manner. Allow me to recap a medley of events for you, briefly:

Cop: ‘Did you see that sign back there?’

Possible Answer: A) ‘Yes’
Response: ‘So you willfully disregarded the sign then. You know, all I ever see around here are accidents and blah blah blah.’
End Result: Ticket

Possible Answer: B) ‘No’
Response: ‘So, you’re a lousy driver and you aren’t paying attention to the road either, huh? I should cite you for blah blah blah blah.’
End Result: Ticket

Possible Answer: C) ‘Yes, but I guess that I made a judgement call, because everyone else wa-’
Response: ‘A what?!?? If everyone jumped off of a bridge would you? If everyone blah blah blah blah, would you!?’
End Result: Ticket

I fleetingly and fancifully thought about getting cheeky with the officer, since I knew I was going to get a ticket anyway, but resisted the temptation to answer in the affirmative. After all, if everyone is jumping off the bridge then there’s probably going to be a good reason (train coming, bridge on fire, etc), but I let that one slide because, well, I didn’t really need any new jewelry that day. Anyway, back to the present:

Cop: ‘Did you see that sign back there?’
Don: ‘Ack!’
Me (stepping off the car): ‘Hi Offi-‘
Cop: ‘Son, have you been drinking?’
Me: (I know the answer to this one, because I get asked all the time for some reason): ‘No sir!’
Cop: ‘License and registration.’
Me (after having retrieved it by shimmying through the sunroof, to the delight of onlookers): ‘Here it is.’
Cop: ‘What happened?’
Sam Kinnison: ‘Well, you SEE,’
Me (cutting Don off, so we don’t end up in bracelets): ‘I, uh, just got distracted, and umm, I guess we ended up here.’
Cop (writing things down and frowning at me): ‘I should cite you for reckless driving, but it looks like you have enough to worry about for right now.’
Me (in disbelief, as I have never gotten out of a ticket before in my life): ‘Uh… thanks.’
Cop: ‘You got a tow truck on the way, right?’
Me (I sure will in a minute here): ‘Yup!’

The cop then cheerfully proceeded to light about 15 road flares and sprinkle them all about the shoulder of the road, as if there was going to be some sort of party in our honor, and then gets in his car and leaves. This is truly excellent, because now anyone who might have missed a bright red Acura sitting at the bottom of a canal with two nimrods sitting on top of it is not going to make the same mistake when it’s surrounded by flares – oh no.

So I sit back down on top of the car to call a tow truck amid what has become every one else on the road’s personal reality TV show, and I think to myself: Do we have AAA? So I call my wife to ask, and if so what our account number is. The conversation went something like this:

* ring ring *
Her: ‘Hello.’
Me: ‘Hi, do we have AAA?’
Her: ‘No.’
Me: ‘Damn.’
Her: ‘Wait, what do you need AAA for?’
Me (cornered): ‘Errr.. Nothing!’
Her: ‘What did you do?’
Me: ‘Uhh… Well, we sort of like, drove into a ditch by accident.’
Her (pausing): ‘And how on earth did you do that?’
Don (who had been listening in - shouting): ‘We was checkin’ out ASS!!!’
Me: (covering the phone): ‘I don’t remember. I have to call a tow truck now though.’
Her: ‘There’s a sticker on your window, remember?’
* click *

Ahhh, that’s right. The auto manufacturer offered free roadside assistance for the first 48k miles. I had forgotten that! So I call them up and a guy with a two truck arrives in short order, winches the car out of the canal and what was a rakish 45 degree angle or more, and we are back on the road in no time. No visible damage to the car at all, save a couple paint scrapes that were caused by a patch of blackberries growing on the side of the canal. Amazing really. So we get back in the car and continue, though somewhat more cautiously and shakily, on to the team building event - which is half over by this point, but whatever.

Don: ‘Don’t fucking kill us this time.’
Me: ‘Okay.’
Don: ‘Pink.’
Me: ‘m’

We pulled in at the address a few minutes later. Turns out that the teambuilding event was, for real, a racing event hosted here: http://www.traxxracing.com/groups.asp .

We opted out.