In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so that we can feel something. — Crash (2004)
The jolt shocked me; I was stopped at a traffic light. The car I saw in my rear-view mirror was large and close and had crashed into the rear of mine. I climbed from my 1972 Volkswagen Super Beetle and approached the other driver. I asked for his driver’s license and insurance information and stood at the intersection recording them, ignoring the angry honkers who had to maneuver around us. This was 1971, and the second time that I had been rear-ended in Los Angeles California since I arrived there in 1970. The first time, the other driver fled before I could get his information. I wasn’t going anywhere without this driver’s information.
My eldest child belittles my driving habits; Lisa giggles that I “drive like an old man,” ignoring the fact that indeed, I am an old man. I grew up in the city of Pittsburgh, which had a good public transportation system that got me to art school and work. I had no access to a car and never learned to drive one. When I decided to marry my best friend, she taught me to drive the 1963 Volkswagen Bug we bought shortly after we wed in 1969. A year later, we spent 6 weeks driving that car across the country from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles, camping in a 6-foot canvas tent along the way. We shared the driving duties, never longer than eight hours in a day, with no one behind the wheel for longer than four hours. The sleepy parkways of Pennsylvania did not prepare us for the race-track freeways of California, but it was not the freeway that delivered the third hit to a car I was driving, the third rear-ending since I had arrived in California.
I had just picked up my Super Beetle from the repair shop, where my bumper and been straightened and re-chromed, and was driving my pregnant bride home from her job when we were punched by the impact from a car behind us. Once again, I was at a stop sign. Once again, I climbed from the orange Beetle and approached the offending driver. My bride stepped from the passenger’s seat of our car and when the other driver saw her, he bawled, “Oh, great: She’s pregnant! Now you’re gonna sue me!” Few people know of my violent temper; I’ve managed to control it for the most part. But on this day in 1972, the man who rammed my car was privileged to get a glimpse into the raging window.
Severe medical issues with my bride made conception and birth of a child an unlikely possibility. Against the odds, we had conceived, and the embryo was clinging tenuously to the uterine wall. My calm demeanor upon exiting my Super Beetle belied my terrified state of mind, and the man’s insensitivity tore through my reserve. I turned away from him and struck a great dent into the top of my battered Bug. The man shut up. The insurance company could not understand how a rear-ending accident could create a great gouge on the roof of the passenger’s side of the car. That moaning man, the last bender of my fender in my driving life, was sued. My bride and I refused to settle the suit until our daughter had developed into a healthy 6-month-old.
You don’t need to touch me by crashing into my car.
cjon3acd@att.net