Are You Kiddin' Me?

It was a good weekend.

Really.

Oldest walked the stage to receive her Masters, partied with her, her beau, the oldest grandchild, got to spend a day out with grandkids.

Heh, yuck, also had to clean every toilet I used not in our hotel room off. EVERY! SINGLE! ONE! (that's how exclamation points are used nowadays, right?) Are males in Indiana all marking toilets as their turf or something? And are they all race car drivers?

Oh, right. And got rear-ended by a friggin' Peterbuilt.

Maybe I should have led with that.

Trust me, if I had realized dude wasn't paying attention I would have run that red light. Our car is damaged, our backs aren't young anymore, and we got rear-ended by a friggin' Peterbuilt.

Now, it's all a matter of perspective. Our perspective was, we still had three hours till out daughter's graduation ceremony and needed a good cup of coffee.

Any day you get (insert "rear-ended by a friggin' Peterbuilt" here) and walk away, you've had a good day. Nobody even injured, even better. But you've still been, yeah, you got it. R-EBAFPed.

I knew the truck and its unknown cargo in a 39 foot dump trailer had been back there. But he had been keeping a decent distance. For a sec, thought I could make the light, but it turned red with plenty of room to make a quick stop. So I took foot off gas and put on the brakes, stopped. It was a bit quick, wife glanced a bit of a dirty look at me. I was just self-congratulating myself on a job well-done, a complete stop with a couple feet to spare when I heard the gawdaffullest screech as the friggin' Peterbuilt just then decided maybe it shouldn't smack into the little blue Honda Fit in front of it. I hear some guy comment deeply and philosophically, "Oh, S#!t!." since it was only my wife and I in the car, I suppose it had been me. I was able to get foot off brake, making sure I wouldn't get T-boned if I mashed the gas, but too late. I was R-EBAFPed.

Well, my car was now in the intersection, the friggin' Peterbuilt wasn't, and so far we both seemed to have survived the event. Mrs. Stewart, my frail and delicate Sicilian princess, insisted she was okay. Hmmm, I've seen that woman insist she was fine with a broken ankle, with a sprained back, after the births of each of our daughters. So I was skeptical, but she insisted. Okay, then.

So it was time to calmly and rationally trade information with the other driver. I get out of the car, he gets out of the truck.

I approached calmly and rationally, and after he said he was okay, in such a state of mind ask him why the (insert deletive) was he following so close. He answers, "I have 80,000 pounds of truck, I can't stop on a dime." (True.) But he adds, "The the (expletive deleted) did you slam on your brakes when the light was yellow?"

Now, I know I'm getting old and a little slower. But the only reason I braked at all was that the light changed to red before I got to the intersection, AND yours truly had ascertained there was time to stop fully. Which, as you've noticed above, I had.

That means he was really paying no attention to the light, and was going to simply follow me through. Probably mad I had been keeping the speed limit, though really I was simply following the car in front of me. No two solid objects can occupy the same space at the same time and all that.

So I say, "Are you (expletive deleted" kiddin' me?" And I repeat the light was red and he needs to give enough room to brake his 80,000 pound friggin' Peterbuilt.

he

starts arguing so though I was severely annoyed by this time (before you judge, you get R-EBAFPed and see if you're in a good mood) so I think, fine. We'll see what local law has to say. So I said "(expletive deleted,) that's (expletive deleted,)" maybe not my finest moment, and walk back to my car trying to see my phone screen from the sun's glare.

Our responding officer assured us we should be done in plenty of time to get to the ceremony, which we were. Our car is drivable. And most importantly, we are both okay. A bit stiff today, but we've done a lot of driving the past three days.

Any day you can get R-EBAFPed and everybody walks away is a fine, glorious, I'm-just-happy-to-be-here day.

But I don't recommend it.