THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE DAY
Before I was writing full-time, back when I still worked in purgatory, aka the health club industry, I used to keep an apartment in Brooklyn. It was a homey place and very convenient; I overlooked the water and got to drive five blocks to work each day. You couldn’t ask for a better commute. Unfortunately, New York City has a well-earned reputation for being a “tough town”, and one of the side effects of spending time there was being involved in an assortment of misadventures. This was one of the more amusing ones.
One afternoon, I was sitting in traffic, struggling to make my way onto the Belt Parkway. I was at a red light when suddenly, my SUV shuddered. It’s a feeling I’ve had the misfortune of experiencing several times – usually the result of some inattentive clod rear-ending you. This impact didn’t feel particularly heavy, however, and I wasn’t sure. I remember thinking, “Did somebody just hit me?”
I threw it in park and got out. As I got to the rear of my vehicle, I found two “cujines” (see definition 2 in the Urban Dictionary:http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cugine) sitting in a very expensive Mercedes sports car. They were nineteen at most and both, driver included, were sitting there texting away on their not-so-smart phones. The moron behind the wheel was so obsessed with his tweet that he basically rolled right into me.
As I drew closer the driver looked up and said to me, “What, I hit you?” Then his expression changed to one of condescension, topped off with a cocky smirk, and he added, “I mean, you backed into me?”
My eyes narrowed and I clamped down on my desire to pull the little snot out of the window of what I was sure was his dad’s car. I glanced at the back of my SUV. There wasn’t a mark on it, but I did notice my trailer hitch had punched a rather nice, symmetrical hole clean through the Benz’s grill and into its radiator.
I turned to “Saturday Night Fever” with a sarcastic grin of my own and replied, “Nah . . . we’re good. You have a nice day.”
As I drove off laughing, I couldn’t help but relish thinking about the beating the kid undoubtedly got when his dad came home and found several thousand dollars’ worth of damage to his brand-new car. I could picture him saying, “Oh, yeah? Let me see your cell phone . . .”
“Bang! Zoom! To the moon, Alice!”
Some days karma works faster than others.
