RIDING ALONG IN MY AUTOMOBILE

Nobody was hurt and it would have really been classified as a fender bender had I not been in my little tiny compact car and the other driver been in a goddamned monster truck named "TRUCKFUCKINZILLA!!!" with three exclamation marks because we are in Alabama and you ain't shit unless you're driving a vehicle the size of New Mexico in this state because yeeee-hawwwww them kinda cars is what we drive here, beeyotch!

Anyway, I was backing up out of a parking space at the local mall and this girl was parked directly behind me. As I went to put the car into drive, she decided "La dee dah ... now would be the PERFECT time to start backing up this building on wheels! I'm sure there's nobody behind me!"

Well guess what sister?

Me and my son were right there in your path.

So she slams into me and get this ... because her SUV was so large ... she keeps coming once she's hit me.

She obviously thinks she's run over a rock.

Meanwhile, the rear of my car is folding up like an accordion.

Andrew, God bless him, has the mechanical knowledge of his father.

"Do we have a flat tire, Dad?" he asks as this girl keeps plowing into us.

"No," I say calmly. "We have a woman wrecking into us."

Q: How did I know it was a woman?

A: Men are never responsible for wrecks. Duh.

So once this girl realizes that she's obviously backing up into something and whatever it is is keeping her from backing up any further, she stops.

She gets out of her car and she's 17 years old.

By this point I'm surveying the damage on my car which really didn't look that bad until I took the car in for an estimate and they said "Two thousand five hundred sixty-eight dollars and change."

So the girl is standing there in tears going "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry" as we look at the rear of her car and there's not a scratch on it. Nothing. No souvenir from her stupidity.

But the "I'm Sorrys" are good enough for me, right?

She's APOLOGIZING.

Therefore, in my book, that's an admission of guilt.

But, being on private property, the police here won't assign guilt to either party. That's up to the insurance companies.

So I call my insurance company, explain that this girl backed out into me while I was already in the street, she apologized several times ... NEVER CAME RIGHT OUT AND SAID "IT WAS ALL MY FAULT" ... but it obviously was.

Insurance company says it's a cut and dry case. She was crying and apologizing. No problem.

Oh wait.

Problem.

Because four days later when HER insurance company calls me, they say that she has a witness saying we were both backing up at the same time.

I explain that yes, we were both backing up in the same time FRAME ... within seconds of each other. But I had already backed up and applied my brakes and was putting my car into Drive when I saw her taillights coming at me. I tried to honk to let her know she was about to crash into me, but I didn't honk in time.

Well, her witness is a good friend of hers who saw it all.

Which is kind of funny because the girl immediately got on her cell phone, made a call and within two minutes, she DID have a friend there.

A friend who I believe was inside the mall at the time and DIDN'T see the wreck.

Anyway, unless HER insurance company can get HER witness to admit that I was stopped, they are not at fault.

Yeah. I can REALLY see the insurance company busting their ass to get this girl to trip up in her scripted testimony to help the other guy out.

That's how insurance companies get big and fat and rich ... by paying for other insurance company's wrecks.

Yeah, lady. I'm that goddamned gullible.

So I've put a call in to my insurance agent and left a voicemail telling her that if they want to win this thing, they need to get in touch with this "witness" and grill her until she admits she was inside the mall and didn't see a thing.

Haven't heard back from my insurance agent left.

Maybe they don't like to be told how to do their business.

All I've got to say is if my insurance goes up, there's going to be some Kung Fu going on up in this joint.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Seventeen year-old girls have no business driving their parents' SUV when I'm around.

Goddammit.