OOPS -- NOT AGAIN




There was ANOTHER huge accident in front of my house tonight. According to a bystander the car flipped over several times before landing upright. Along the way it bounced into several other vehicles. It would have hit the bystander's wife's car, too. But, luckily, she was at work. Phew.

I heard it all from my desk; the screeching and those awful loud thuds that can only come from one 3000-pound metal projectile slamming into another. Or, in this case, several others.

It's happened so many times over the years. The screech, the thuds. In the early years, before the world was wireless, I'd phone it in myself.

As usual it seems no one was hurt, but many vehicles were dented.

And many bystanders, who crept from their homes like roaches after dark, were well entertained.


I walked out of my building to gape at the same time as one of my new neighbors.

(Some background; while I was in India, two or three apartments in my building changed hands. The new tenants seem to know my neighbor-across-the-way, Jennywhatever, and there's a lot of cooking and stomping up and down the rear stairs. Unlike previous tenants (Neck Tattoo and the Firef--ker nonwithstanding) they've been unusually weird/unfriendly. Was life so good while I was away? I mean, I sign for their packages and walk around in SOCKS, for cryin' out loud).

Anyway, I said to my new-ish neighbor that there had been a similar accident in the same spot about a month ago, and that you should never park in front of the building if you can help it. He wondered why the accidents keep happening. I was too tired to say "because it's a four-lane street and people go too fast and no one has been able to see the other cars ever since the mayor installed giant cement planters in the middle of the street." Instead I suggested that there was something wrong with this particular intersection. He was like, "it's rough everywhere."

No, it's rough HERE.

I didn't tell him that oftimes people who live in the building go out to their cars in the morning only to find them dented beyond recognition. It even happened to me.

Later I heard the new-ish neighbor agree with another (male) bystander that it's a bad intersection, and that he himself never parks in front of the building.

CSer.

Wonder if he knows I've been stealing his internet....*





Last time around, the car in question flipped over and settled on its side right in front of my building. I was about to leave for work, and my first thought was, "That thing better not be blocking me in."**

Before the firetrucks arrived a group of guys -- and a few women -- tried to push the car upright. They were not successful. But it was fun to gape anyway.



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*Actually I only borrow the neighbor's internet when mine takes too long to upload photos

****Actually the first thing I do is offer up a prayer whenever I hear those thuds or see a rescue squad or run across (not over) a dead animal or a homeless person or someone in agony or hear about a death.