Thursday, August 10, 2006

Lunch Breaks and Hammer-Heads

Surgeon in My Dreams is going to have to start knitting during her lunch breaks. She can no longer leave the office and go on her adventures.

Today, she was late leaving for lunch since she was helping run cable for a computer in the office. She ran down to the Burger King and picked up a Cherry Icee (which by the way is white!! What is the fun of a Cherry Icee if it is white?) and a burger. She was almost back to work, when a van comes across 5 empty lanes of traffic just to drive in her lane…with her still in it.

Well, Surgeon in My Dreams has never been in a traffic accident before (knocking on wood) so this is quite a new experience for her. Surgeon in My Dreams has already pulled over onto the curb to her right trying to get out of the crazy persons way, so she is nearly stopped and is fully expecting the nut case to do the same.

But no!!! This hammer head is going to run! Surgeon in My Dreams begins flashing her lights and yelling to “stop, stop” (no matter that the windows were up and no one other than the dust bunnies who live in her car could hear her). But the crazy person continues to drive away, picking up speed no less.

Surgeon in My Dreams forgets it is NOT 1996 and she is NOT still a cop (not to mention she does NOT have a gun) and she takes off after her assailant. After about a three mile excursion, this freakoid pulls into a driveway in a neighborhood like Surgeon in My Dreams used to visit a lot back in 1996 when she WAS a cop.

As the van door opens, a lady steps out, looks at Surgeon in My Dreams, who by then is already getting out of her car to view the damage for the first time, (complete in her dress and heels) and says , “What?”. When Surgeon in My Dreams politely informs the lady that she had just hit her, the lady say “No I didn’t”.

Now granted, Surgeon in My Dreams has been working all week and it is Friday and she is nearly brain dead, but she believes she would remember if a big van had not hit her car.

The lady goes in her house and brings her husband outside who asks me the same thing, “What?” Now Surgeon in My Dreams is beginning to get the idea this family may be a couple biscuits short of a panful, so she explains very slowly while pointing to her crumpled car (which by the way is the very first car she had ever picked out and bought all by herself) that “the lady ran into me and then took off like nothing had happened.”

At this point, the husband of the crazy lady said “she probably didn’t know she hit you”. I could only hope at this point this couple had not procreated.

While waiting on the trooper, (what, were they all at Krispy Kreme), the husband asks me would I just take their insurance information and forget about the trooper. After deciding I could take the husband if I had to, I answered no. We were definitely waiting on the trooper.

So, 45 minutes after my adrenaline induced phone call to 911, the trooper finally got there. By now I have a true adrenaline surge going on in my body. I learned about this phenomenon, the Fight or Flight, at the police department.

My very first car chase at The Big Police Department, ended up outside my jurisdiction so I was pulled off the chase and the next jurisdiction took over. They got to catch the driver and fight with him, thereby releasing the adrenaline that their body had automatically produced. When there is no physical “release” of this adrenaline, the surge does different things to different people. Me personally, the night of my first car chase, I pulled over and threw up in a Holiday Inn parking lot. Then I got a serious migraine which lasted about 2 hours.

Well, the very nice, young (geez, had he even graduated from high school yet?) trooper wrote out a few tickets, (turns out her license was suspended in addition to everything else), complimented me on my audacity to follow her, and then warned me how dangerous it could have been. He ended by telling me to have a nice day.

I finally found my way out of the neighborhood and back to the office. Of course my boss was completely sympathetic and earnest and made no jokes about my little afternoon lunch break. NOT!!

The Icee was good though. You know if you wait till they’re melted, they taste almost like having an old fashioned snow cone does when you ask for extra syrup.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yikes--what a day! I hope you are okay . . .