UPDATE!!!

There are some days when it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed, like last Tuesday. I hit the “ignore bar” on the clock radio four or five times and pleaded with The Grrl to play hooky just this once. Outside the temperature was hovering somewhere around –37c and the wind chill made it feel closer to –50c. This was not a day to be out if it could at all be helped. One more time I tried my best to cajole The Grrl into taking the day off only to get the old, “I have to go in,” routine that is ever so prevalent in our “work your ass off your whole life and retire only when you are ready to die” Western Society that we live in.

I bundled up and headed out into a white wilderness of snow, blowing snow, and sub-zero winds that tore at every millimeter of exposed flesh. I trudged through the icy plain toward the parking lot. After nearly twenty seconds of struggling with the block heater cord, I finally managed to pull the plug from the extension cord, snapping off the brittle plastic prong cover in the process. Looking at it grimly in my mitted hand I hoped it wasn’t a harbinger of things to come.

The truck started no problem, so I struggled back towards the condo, icy snow blowing across my face like heavy-grit sandpaper. Tearing open the storm door against the wind I finally managed to get my frozen carcass back inside.

Twenty minutes later we were off, late again, The Grrl driving me into work. At the bottom of the hill a white car sat, abandoned, its emergency lights blinking slowly, ready to give up the ghost. In this kind of cold, nothing survives for long.

At an intersection two blocks from the main causeway a school bus in front of us slows down, then moves into the right lane to turn. It begins its turn, slowly, surely and just as we are passing a blue Windstar appears from out of nowhere in front of us, having ran the stop sign.

I don’t remember if I said anything, but remember hearing The Grrl shouting “Ohnoohnoohnoohnohno!” I reacted, grabbing the Holy Shit Handle™, bracing for collision, and the inevitable explosion of powder and airbag that I expected would be hitting me in my grill at any second.

The Windstar hit us in the front, closer to the passenger side and drilled us back and to the side. The air bags didn’t deploy, perhaps because we weren’t going any more than twenty at the moment of impact. That said, the truck was un-drivable, as the Windstar’s bumper hit at an angle, completely destroying the radiator and the transmission cooler.

I got out and started shouting at the other driver, waving my arms around and ranting at this point not knowing if it was man, woman, or child. When the woman emerged (what a surprise) and started saying it wasn’t her fault because she was trying to see around the school bus, I lost it and inquired quite loudly as to whether she was “a fucking retard, or what?”

I called the police and they sent someone out quick, along with a HAZMAT fire truck to clean up the coolant still spraying from our punctured radiator. It took an hour for the Police to take our statements, and issue the retarded female driver of the Windstar a ticket for leaving a stop sign when it was unsafe to do so.

We were only five blocks from home, and the sun was now shining on this wonderful day so we decided to limp the truck home, drink a cup of coffee and call the insurance company. As we sat there on the leather couch, sipping our hot, steamy brew I said to The Grrl, “I bet you wish you’d stayed in bed.”

She looked at me and laughed.