Hester and the Bully

This morning, Hester got into a bit of a scuffle. She's going to be fine, ultimately, but she's a little worse for wear.


I was at an intersection, waiting to make a right turn against a red light when it happened. I started to pull out, then decided that the oncoming car was a little closer than I'd thought and so stopped to let it go by. There was a sudden jolt from behind accompanied by a crunch, and I looked into my rearview mirror to see a hulking SUV directly behind me.


The car that hit me was a Toyota 4 Runner driven by a woman who seemed nice but rather irritated. We both called our insurance companies and hers sent a policeman to write up an accident report. They also advised her to move into a nearby parking lot, which we did. While waiting for the cop to arrive, I inspected both my car and the other woman's. It appeared that hers had only a bent license plate frame. Poor Hester hadn't been so lucky. She's quite dirty, so it took a while for me to spot all the damage, but the more I looked the more I saw. Most of her injuries are limited to her bumper, though there is a small dent on the door of her hatchback, too.

The dust actually helps to show the points of impact. Along the top of the bumper you can see a crack running parallel to my license plate (though it's not a great picture).

The policeman finally arrived, took down all of our information, and made sure we'd been wearing our seatbelts, corrective lenses, etc. I spent large parts of that morning and that afternoon on the phone with both the other woman's insurance company and mine, the body shop both companies recommended, and Hertz and Enterprise. The other driver is at fault so all of this will be fixed at no cost to me, but the only appointments I could get for the estimate and then the work are pretty far down the road. Oh well. At least poor Hester is drive-able.


This was my first accident, and I found the experience unexpectedly unsettling. Even though it was clear from the moment of impact that the damage was very minor, it was still about ten minutes before I stopped feeling somewhat shaky. Even though I was not the one that caused the accident, I am driving extra carefully now, looking in all directions multiple times before making any sort of move. The woman at the body shop told me to do something nice for that night, which seemed like very sound advice. I settled on a glass or three of wine and a few episodes of The Wire. And a few chocolate peanut butter cups.