Mulched

As I walked from my car to the front door of my office building, I glanced into the window of the car I was passing. The car was a Chevy Blazer, and because of its height, I could still see the driver seated inside. I was almost past him when I felt his car door nudge me lightly in the back. Before I could react, the door rebounded off my body and started falling back toward the driver.

The driver must have thought he hadn’t given the door enough of a push, because the next thing I knew, he had flung open his door and I was knocked onto the ground.

I sat up slowly. My left hand had mulch embedded in it, and my right leg was throbbing. For a few seconds, I wasn’t quite sure what had happened and how I’d ended up in the landscaping. I looked around me and saw the driver, now out of his car, staring open-mouthed at me.

“Oh my gosh, are you okay?” he said.

“Yeah, I think so,” I said. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure if I was okay yet, but the same ingrained ego that made me answer “How are you?” with an automatic “Good, and how are you?” was kicking in. Oddly, the ego was also quietly insisting that manners were important even now, and that I should react as though he hadn’t just knocked me over.

“Pretend nothing happened,” the ego advised me. “That’s the way to get over the embarrassment.”

“But why should I be embarrassed?” I muttered back. “It’s not my fault I�m sitting in mulch. He should be the one who’s embarrassed.”

“Maybe you deliberately incited him to open the door just as you were walking past it. You looked in the car; you saw someone was in it and you must have known he might open the door soon.”

“That’s ridiculous! I’m not talking to you any more today.” I looked back at the driver, who seemed so confused by the accident that he still hadn�t apologized or offered to help me up.

I staggered to my feet, holding onto my work bag. My hand had already turned purplish where a mulch chip had stabbed it, and the ego, who would not be stopped, informed me that I had mulch pieces all over my pants.

“I’m so sorry,” the man finally blurted out. “I didn’t see you standing there.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured that,” I said. I brushed off the mulch bits from my pants. Somehow it seemed easier to worry about my pants than to deal with the driver. I’d never had to confront someone who had just tried to launch me into space, and was operating on the assumption that if I just ignored him long enough, the entire situation might cease to occur.

“Are you okay?” he asked again. “I’m sorry. I can’t believe I did that.”

I said, “Yeah, I guess so.” I started walking inside the building. Maybe I was still in shock, but I just wanted to go inside and get to work. I opened the door and held it for him. (“That’s more like it,” the ego said. “How embarrassing, he works in the same building as you. There’s no way you can avoid him now. You’ll have to see him every day, and every day you’ll be reminded of this. Didn’t I tell you to — hang on a minute, I think the id’s at the door.”)

He stumbled into his office and I kept going into my own office.

“Some guy just knocked me over with his car door,” I announced. Apparently this wasn’t usual behavior, because the two lawyers in the office and the secretary came over to me.

“Who was this? Are you okay?” the secretary asked.

“Yeah, it’s just my hand. I think the guy works around the corner. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt or something?”

“Oh, must be the fish guys,” she said knowledgably. “That seems like the kind of place that would be casual like that.”

One of the lawyers said, “Did you get his car insurance information? Just in case something happens later with your arm.”

“Spoken like a true lawyer,” the other lawyer said proudly.

“Maybe I should,” I said. “I didn’t think of that.”

I went back outside to the scene of the accident with a pad of paper. As I scribbled down his license plate number, make and model of his car, I noticed there was a piece of paper on the dashboard of his car. The design on the paper looked familiar, and when I peered through the windshield, I realized it was a receipt from the same vet clinic we used for our dogs. I copied down what seemed to be the driver’s name and address from the receipt and then turned toward the office. The driver was standing in the doorway, looking at me.

“Uh-oh, he caught you! How embarrassing! This just isn’t a good day for you,” the ego mused.

“Are you okay?” he asked again.

“Yeah, I think so,” I said. “But I work for lawyers–” he nodded glumly, unsurprised –”and they advised me to just get your car insurance information.”

He hesitated. “Well, I work just over there,” he said, pointing at his office.

“Can I just get your telephone number?”

He gave me the number, and then I asked for his name. I already had his name on my pad of paper from the vet receipt, but I pretended to write it down again, even asking him to spell his last name.

“So you’ve worked here for a while?” I asked, trying to convey in my question that I was really asking if he was going to switch jobs and disappear to escape my potential lawsuit (“because that’s what you should do if this happens to you — switch jobs! Disappear into the wind,” said the ego).

“Two years,” he said.

“Okay, that should be all I need,” I said. I went back to my office. I sat and thought about it, and the more I thought about what had happened, the angrier I got. Eventually I went into the bathroom and called Chris.

“HE KNOCKED YOU OVER?” Chris said. “WHAT AN ASSHOLE!” He was ready for a fight, evidently, and I was just sorry he hadn’t been around when I fell.

“Well, it was a mistake,” I said. “I mean, it was obvious he didn�t see me. But I should have yelled at him. My hand is all bruised. And he was stupid!”

“No kidding!”

“I can’t sue or anything,” I continued, “because I don’t even have any broken bones. Man, if this was Taiwan, I could just go up to him and demand 50 bucks or something, like when that taxi ran over my grandmother’s foot and she thumped on the trunk of the car to get him to stop and pay her!”

“There should just be a stupid tax on stupid people,” I decided. I liked the idea. I wasn’t seriously hurt and wasn’t suffering undue emotional stress. Well, okay, I was suffering undue emotional stress, but nothing abnormal for someone who typically freaked out when she saw a bug on the floor.

My health insurance would take care of any problems that might turn up, and I knew that even if I’d wanted to sue, lawyers’ fees would be higher than anything I could get from the fish guy. But a small stupid tax on stupid people would make me feel better. Then again, maybe I was just going through post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Later that afternoon, the fish guy came into my office. “I am so sorry again,” he said. “I can’t believe I did that.”

He put some boxes on my desk. “This is what we do,” he explained. “We import fish, so I just brought this over for you as an apology, and here’s my card.”

“Oh, thank you! You didn’t need to do that,” I said. I didn’t mean it, of course. Because the sight of free fish, while unexpected, was suddenly doing a lot to make me forget about getting knocked over in the parking lot.

After he left, I examined his card. He was the Chief Operating Officer of the company, and thus presumably privileged to dispense fish. I didn’t even eat sardines, but a whole box of them, free, was pretty exciting. And two packages of smoked salmon? What a bonanza!

“Fish is good brain food,” the ego said complacently. “Now I can get BIGGER! And maybe you’ll listen to me next time.”

“Shut up and eat,” I said. “And next time, for cripes’ sake, remind me not to walk next to any cars.”

Posted by: Supersonic Jane | June 9, 2004 | 10:57 pm
Posted in: This Life