Man at Accident: [after Terry has backed into his car] Excuse me, but I think we've had an accident.
Terry Fields: Well, goddammit, I won't report you this time, but next time just watch it, will ya?
—"American Graffiti," 1973
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I got a call this week from a friend of mine. She told me that she'd called my grandmother to chitchat, and it turned out that Grandma had been in an accident earlier that day. She was OK and all, but "you might want to call her tonight." Since it was my stepfather's birthday, it was already part of my plans to call, so that worked out all right.
That evening I dial my mother's number and the machine picks up. It's 8pm, so either they're at my brother's or I don't know where. Certainly they're not still at dinner. Next call is to my brother. They're not there either, but he's not sure where they are. I don't think he knew about the accident. So just for the giggles I call my grandmother's number. She lives with my mom but has her own phone line.
Surprise! She's home and picks up the phone. Mom & Stepdad have gone to the Hard Rock Casino for dinner and some gambling. So now I get the accident story.
As an aside, let me tell you about the stories that come from my grandparents. My late grandfather never changed the wording of his stories. He told them the same way when I was 30 years old as he did when I was five years old. I could tell you his stories and tell them the same way, through sheer rote memorization.
My grandmother, however, tends to embellish the tales as time goes on. A few years ago I called her only moments after a couple of con artists talked their way into the house and managed to swipe a few checks from the checkbook on the dining room table. A year later, it sounded like the house had been forcibly invaded by Nazi Stormtroopers who shot everything in sight and then raided the bank account at gunpoint. (For the record, they ultimately didn't get any money, not from her bank account anyway.)
Anyway. She was on a major road near the house, the misnamed Little Road, and she's waiting at the traffic light so she can make the left into the neighborhood. There's a van in front of her, then some space, then her and a couple of cars behind her. They're all waiting for the green arrow. Suddenly (as these things happen), a car comes out of nowhere and sideswipes her on the passenger side, banging up the door and the front fender and taking out the sideview mirror. The car swerves into the space in front of her and smashes into the van. The van gets pushed, and the car keeps moving, and in the end several cars are involved with one another. Grandma sees the two people in this car get out and switch places with each other.
The police show up pretty quickly and, as they're getting things sorted out, the guy who was driving ultimately confesses to it, apparently saying to the girl that she shouldn't cover for him anymore. Turns out that he doesn't have a license at all, so he's off to the pokey. The police get Grandma's information, make sure that she's okay and, because the car is still in driveable condition, give her the report number for the insurance and send her on her way. Literally seconds later she's in the house.
A short while later, my mom & stepfather come into the house. "Ma, you should have seen the big accident out on Little Road—it's almost gone now but you can tell there were a lot of cars involved."
"SEE it?" asked Grandma. "I was IN it!"
And that's when they went back outside to look at the car and my mom realized that she'd missed the smashed-up passenger side of the car entirely when they'd pulled into the driveway.
Grandma wrapped up her story by telling me, "Your mother's been getting on me to give up the driving...I don't know, wrecking the car might have been a sign that she's right. I hate it when she's right." Her car is a late 1980's-model Buick which she kept in very good condition despite the fact that the windows have to be cranked in exactly the opposite direction you expect (clockwise for UP, anticlockwise for DOWN on the driver's side), so it's likely that the insurance company will total the car. At this point they'd probably total it over a broken headlight. So we're waiting to see how this whole thing shakes out for her.
