The Other Guy's Fault

I detest texters who cost you a light, because they're so busy not paying attention that the green light comes and goes and they still haven't finished their text until the very end of the light. So this one time I saw this happening; there was a little red Mustang right in front of me in a left-turn lane, and I really leaned on the horn, right in her face so to speak, because I didn't want to miss another light. People don't usually honk their horns like that in Texas, so she got a little rattled and gunned it, but the problem was, she was in reverse, so she smashed right into me, right in my face, so to speak, and my Caddy started to let out a plume of steam that kind of altered the visibility.

Why would she be in reverse? At first I thought she'd smashed me deliberately, because she didn't like my horn. But no, I found out later, she was in reverse because she'd gone a little too far into the intersection in the first place, and she'd had to back up right before her boyfriend had face-timed her. And it was game day, which around here means more traffic, unusually high anticipation, people in a hurry, people carrying entire kegs to the parking lots over near the stadium, everybody waiting for them, and all this frenzied activity. So people were not happy that we were still in this left-turn lane with a huge plume of steam rising up over us, and some people started honking and becoming visibly impatient.

I was furious, as I've already said. But lo and behold, when I saw her getting out of her car and coming toward me, everything changed. She also was quite upset, trying to imagine what would happen to her insurance, what it would cost to repair her Mustang and my Caddy, whether to call a tow truck or the police, how to get wherever she was going, and all that. Her boyfriend was yelling at her on the cell phone that she held in her hand, going "Victoria! Victoria! Are you there?" Well of course she's here, idiot, where else would she be? I didn't like this guy already. He had heard the crash, I'm sure, and had some idea what was happening. As it turned out, he could also see a little bit, depending on how she held the phone.

Years later these counseling people taught me that they'd asked everyone how they knew they'd met the love of their life, sometimes in a crowd, or in a situation like this, or wherever. People just know this stuff, and there's no accounting for it. That's kind of what I was going through. I could describe her to you, her long red hair and freckles, all the unique characteristics, but it wouldn't matter, it was other things that did it. Maybe it was that she obviously had this jerk of a boyfriend who would demand that they face-time right while she was turning left on a game day, how insensitive! I had to save her from a guy like that. Face-time, as you may know, is like a phone call on your cell-phone, but you can see the other person, which some people don't like, and they can see you. But what's the point? I don't generally need to see people when I call them.

So we stood there in the road, exchanging insurance information, and the police were there relatively quickly, considering the traffic, and now of course the whole intersection was very backed up, cars going back five or ten blocks in every direction while people tried to get past us. But we weren't going anywhere; it was obvious, to me, anyway, that my Caddy would need a tow. Now her boyfriend was screaming at her something about how whenever somebody hits you from behind, it's his fault. If a car runs into a car in front of it, it's that car's fault, no matter what. Yes, buddy, but this wasn't what happened, I was about to tell him, and I felt like grabbing that phone right out of her hand, but I didn't have to, because suddenly she took the phone and threw it hard on the ground near her own car tires, whereupon it smashed and broke, but ended up way under the car somewhere, where we could still hear this boyfriend going on and on about the other guy's fault. Now this was right before the policeman arrived; the policeman got a sense of what had happened, but he didn't see it directly, because his view was blocked by a delivery truck that was unable to get around us successfully. But right after she'd smashed the phone, she was finding her insurance information and giving it to me, and it was kind of like she was giving me her number, the way she was looking at me, and it was also like, smashing that phone was getting rid of the jerk, he was gone, just like that. That's what it was, as it turned out, because he had given her the phone, and he was the one who had insisted on face-timing or having her always answer it, and, she said, she could get another one easily and it wouldn't have to be all set up on his conditions.

Probably the angriest person in the entire situation was this one football fan right behind me, who was so close to the Caddy that he couldn't just get out and go on his way. Now I know he was a football fan because he was dressed in the local red-and-black, but everyone is, I guess, but he also had these flags on his car.  He was mad partly because the person behind him, a young and helpful graduate student, had simply turned off his car, gotten out of it, and started directing traffic. The graduate student was helping the delivery van get through the intersection; everyone was really impatient; but this football fan directly behind that car kept waving his hands at me like I could get him out of this situation. Sorry, man, my Caddy is blocking the intersection, and you're trapped from behind. There's nothing I can do. He starts honking and yelling like somebody's supposed to do something. Maybe he was honking at the graduate student. He's the one who needed to be somewhere. I was beginning to feel like, football game or whatever, I just wanted to stand here with this woman for a little longer. Leave me alone, I'm concentrating.

The policeman finally had to go over and threaten the football fan with arrest if he didn't shut up and let everyone direct traffic and get out of here. The tow-trucks came; she had one too, but they couldn't get anywhere near us because there was so much traffic stuck or moving around us. The boyfriend, whose yelling under the car finally stopped, arrived on the site and was so angry that she told him to go away and leave her alone, but he said no and raised his voice at her. Maybe it was his red Mustang that had been damaged, or maybe he just wanted his phone, or maybe he saw right away that he was losing her and his world was falling apart, but he was pretty steamed up, and it was all I could do to not step between them. But finally the football fan stepped in and started yelling at him, because he couldn't bear watching a young woman being so mistreated. So now these two men, the football fan and the boyfriend, started pushing and punching each other, and this was a little surprising, because there was a policeman right there, although that policeman may have been preoccupied at the time, but what did they think? Eventually the policeman called for backup, they separated the two men, and hauled them both off for assault, because they'd both swung at each other. Victoria tried her best to reason with the boyfriend, whose name was Charles, but he wasn't seeing reason, he kept pushing the idea that it was my fault, that she needed to get the phone, and that she was acting kind of like she liked me. This last one was true, I hoped.

The football fan, for his part, had kind of a hot temper, as I've said, but once he got out of his car he could see that I couldn't move until I was towed away, and besides, the graduate student who had trapped him from behind wasn't maliciously blocking him in just to keep him trapped all afternoon. As it turned out, he owned a business, and this business had put a lot of money into what they called a tailgate, where they barbequed a pig or whatever, in the parking lot, and drank heavily before the game, and all this cost the business thousands. They didn't care; it was a tax write-off, but it all depended on him bringing the proper ingredients at the right time, probably secret barbeque sauce or whatever, so he'd gotten a little mad that this whole thing was being held up by this accident.

So the football fan and Charles were pushing and punching each other, and this was mostly a problem because it was still a busy street and cars were slowing down going each direction to watch these guys get mad at each other. But eventually the policeman got involved and the backup that he called got involved too; this other guy got there by foot which is obviously faster in this situation, and they arrested these two guys for assault. The football fan was asking if there was anything like "justifiable assault" because this sure was a case where this guy deserved a punch or two, but the policeman was explaining that they could sort out right and wrong with the judge, for now they were just getting off the road. And they did. Victoria put up a cursory fight but was actually a little grateful to see that Charles guy hauled off. Maybe things weren't working out so well for him, and surely not for them. When they hauled off her car, it ran over the phone, and she didn't even look at it.

Years later, we were married, Victoria and I, and we saw that football fan at a game. He said something about how that tailgate had become an enormous thing, and we had to stop by sometime before the next game, but I think that he liked her more than me, and I'm not much of a tailgater anyway. I go to the games as a professional journalist, but I learned to let Victoria do other stuff on those days, because she knew way too many people, they would come around and talk, and I couldn't watch, and she didn't care so much about the game itself anyway. You'd think her texting, face-timing in the car, backing up right into me, and throwing the phone right in front of me would all be red flags that said, watch out for this woman, and yes, my friends told me the same thing; she's obviously not one for cool, careful deliberation.  But it all turned out pretty well, and I ended up writing up all that wild behavior to the fact that she was just at the point of breaking up with that Charles guy, and that was a stressful time. Charles turned out to be a real loser, but that is another story; at least she had the good judgment to ditch him when she had the chance. And years later, I'd tease her about how she'd put on the gas without even realizing she was in reverse; she'd tease me about how she had to smash my Caddy just to get my attention. But, as I said, it all worked out in the end.

(12-14)