… a bit of empathy.
Yesterday I was in my first real car accident and it was totally my fault. Three-quarters of a block from a traffic light, in the middle of a crush of rush hour drivers on the busy city avenue where I live, and stupidly fiddling with my car radio instead of noticing that the cars in front of me had stopped as the light changed, I couldn’t stop in time to avoid slamming into the rear end of the car in front of me. Well, maybe “slamming” is a bit of an overstatement, since the accident happened at about 10 m.p.h., but it felt like more of a slam than, say, a bump. I squeezed my eyes shut and braced myself for the cold metallic sound of bumper on bumper, that crunch that should be reassuring because it means the car is absorbing shock that would be otherwise jarring to the driver but instead sounds more like the ka-ching! of a cash register.
I quickly pulled over to the side of the road, just behind the car I’d hit. I was shaking. It was only a fender bender but my breath was uneven and I had the queasy feeling I usually associate with breaking the rules, which I suppose I had.
“I’m so sorry!” I blurted out as the other driver, a woman in her early to mid-forties, stepped from the damaged Hyundai.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. I apologized again and she repeated herself: “You’ve got to be kidding me.” And then she didn’t say anything for a while as she surveyed the damage to her car. “Yes,” I wanted to say, “I am kidding. Terribly sorry.” And then I would drive away and the accident never would have happened. But I didn’t, because everyone knows a real grown-up takes responsibility for her mistakes.
The aluminum body of my Prius fared worse than her Hyundai, though she didn’t even glance at it. She was just plain mean, in fact, ignoring my repeated apologies and saying coldly, “You just destroyed my brand new car. You did this!” “I’m sorry!” I wanted to scream at her. “Do you want me to kiss your brand new car? It was an accident! Haven’t you ever made a mistake?” Later, when we’d exchanged information, I noticed that her car wasn’t much newer than my own.
I received a crisp stack of business cards a couple of days ago. I gave the first one to the angry Hyundai owner. It made me feel better, like I wasn’t the irresponsible person she tried to make me believe I was. Funny how it’s the little things, like my name printed on a neat rectangle of premium, 100% recycled cardstock, that make a difference. She scribbled her information on a torn scrap of paper. We parted ways without her so much as acknowledging a single one of my dozen or so apologies. She hardly even looked at me. I was just an inconvenience, not a person who might have been hurt.
The police weren’t called, for which I was grateful since I’d have surely been cited. I contacted my insurance agency and everything was sorted with extraordinary ease. When I called my parents to tell them, they were extremely sympathetic. They told me not to worry and were glad I wasn’t hurt. Maybe as a result, Mama said, I’d be more careful in the future and avoid a more serious accident, one in which I could be seriously injured, or even killed. Lessons, she reminded me, are often expensive. She laughed when I told her, at the end of my breathless rendition of events, that it wasn’t fair that I’d had to give my very first real grown-up business card to the woman. Since I’m trying to break into the restaurant business, my card has a photograph of a fork on it. Mama asked me if I regretted it. “No,” I said, and then, referring to the mean driver, “The better to stab you with, my dear!” I giggled daringly. Mama laughed, and in the background I could hear Papa say, “Yeah, fork you, lady!” It was terribly immature and funny, and we all laughed and I felt better.
Ultimately, it’s not such a big deal. I don’t have as much as a sore neck. My car will look awful for a little while, but, as the insurance agent put it, cars heal faster than people. The deductible is money I’d rather spend on clothes or concert tickets or Sunday brunch at my favorite restaurant. Instead, I’ll have to forgo those things for a bit. And that’s about the extent of it.
What really bothers me about the whole incident is how – there’s no better word – mean the other driver was. She was nasty! Nastier than I’ve even made her out to be. She left me feeling deflated, like my word wasn’t good for anything, like I couldn’t possibly be as sorry as I ought to be. But I was! I was so very, very sorry, as much for her as for myself. It reminds me how far a little empathy can go. It’s cliché to say that everything makes mistakes, but most clichés only become so because they are true. I’m going to try especially hard to remember this one next time someone wrongs me, or even rear-ends me. After all, it’s the grown-up thing to do.
