I have recurring insomnia. Not every night, or every week, but enough that I am always playing catch up. One recent Saturday night I was sitting in our upstairs office, cleaning out my e-mail and watching You Tube videos when two loud collisions broke the silence. No screeching tires or car horns, really no noise at all until that unforgettable sound of rapidly folding metal and plastic shattering.
Once out front, I saw a car against the curb across the street, a column of steam jetting out. I heard the dull thumping of techno music mixed with the hissing white clouds. After a moment, a young man stepped out, staring at his cell phone with a puzzled look on his face. It seemed almost as if he thought the entire situation could be undone if just could figure out how to work the phone. It was confusing to me as well. What had he hit? The curb? That’s a lot of damage for hitting a curb, I thought.
I looked right and saw what he had struck, a Ford Taurus that had been parked in front of my neighbor’s house. He hit so hard it ricocheted off the curb and flew across the street hitting my next door neighbor’s parked Toyota Sequoia, cocking it’s front end at least three feet from the curb.
The reason I use the word ‘flew’ is that when I looked at the street in daylight, there was not a single skid mark from where the Taurus was parked to where it landed. After jogging to the Taurus to confirm no one was inside, I went back to the driver of the Z. “Are you okay?,” I asked.
He looked at me as if he were surprised I were there. “No problem. I’m fine. Just a little shook up.” He went on to tell me that he’d been driving a mere twenty-five miles and hour and that the car ‘jumped to the left’, resulting is this NASCAR like carnage.
The driver of this 300 Z lived in the neighborhood. He loved to race his car up and down our street in rally race fashion. Several of us had yelled at him to slow down as he roared past. He never did. He was one of several speeders on our street which is also home to children on bikes and lazy cats and stray dogs, any one of which could have ended up like the Taurus.
I went back in the house and called 911. I also grabbed a camera. While I was on the phone with the police, the Z driver wandered up to his house for about ten minutes and then came back. By then there where a dozen people admiring his handiwork, including the owner of the Taurus whose crime was spending the night at her friend’s house. As each person asked the driver what happened, he repeated the same fantastic story. He was just driving along, going twenty-five, when the car suddenly swung left into the parked car. Most listeners looked at him in disbelief.
The police arrived. One of the officers, after surveying the wreckage and hearing the story, said, “I’m sorry, this is a multiple of twenty-five.” So began the interrogation that became a sobriety test, ending with the Z driver standing behind one of the cruisers in hand cuffs, looking genuinely shocked that no one bought his story.
During the questioning, the driver’s father arrived. At first, he tried to stand back. Slowly, as the situation intensified, he would creep closer trying to hear what was being said. Eventually he was so close the officers asked him to back up. All while his son dug an increasingly deeper hole.
The driver was placed in the police car and taken away. The spectators returned to the warmth of their homes. The driver’s father, after lingering at the scene, turned to me and said, “I’m sorry for this.”
I felt so much empathy for him. We want our kids to do well. We want them to stay out of messes like this. When they fall into them, we blame ourselves. We think we’ve failed as parents even though we can’t control what our kids, especially grown, will do. We may even know this is true, but the ache is there just the same.
“It can happen to any parent,” I offered.
“Maybe he’ll learn something,” the father said. Dad looked like tonight’s adventure was one more step in the journey. He gave me a wan smile and disappeared up the street to await the call from jail.
Back in the office, I was light years from sleep. I reflected upon the events just transpired. A bloodless accident and police record but a chance to straighten out a life running out of control. A totaled Z that would no longer menace the neighborhood. A good outcome.
Dispatches From The Front 