Jeff's Spleen

My third car...

was a red 1980 Toyota Corolla, which I inherited from my grandfather, Philip Green, before he passed away but after he became a menace on the road and stopped driving. Actually, he was a menace on the road way before he stopped driving. One of my fonder childhood memories is of him going about 30 MPH on the freeway in San Francisco, obliviously bobbling in and out of his lane, all the while disparaging the Asian drivers around him. "Can you believe they give licenses to these people?", he'd say.

I took possession of that Corolla in about 1982, while a student at UC Berkeley. College students and driving are two things that don't go very well together. Nevertheless, I actually did manage to not bang up that car. Someone else did it for me.

One pleasant evening in April, while I was pretending to study in my 2nd story apartment in North Berkeley, I heard outside my window the sound of a car's tire screeching, followed by that oddly satisfying crunch of metal on metal. Clearly, an automobile accident had just occurred, which made me happy because it was a good excuse to get up from my desk, as well as an opportunity to revel in someone else's misfortune.

Upon reaching the window, however, I was quick to discover that that misfortune was actually all mine, as my Corolla was now resting on its side, on the sidewalk, totalled--victim of an out-of-control Mercedes. The woman who had been driving the Mercedes was apologetic and horrified, and I ended up being the one who had to calm her down, even though it was she who wrecked my car, and not the other way around. Actually I remember that what annoyed me almost more than anything else was realizng that the Talking Heads cassette that had been in what used to be my car's tape deck was now gone forever.

My grandfather's remark, meanwhile, upon hearing about the accident the following day, was this: "I knew I shouldn't have given you that damn car."

And then he asked if the driver was Asian.

Posted by jeff at June 9, 2004 8:12 PM