Take Ice Cream off the Menu

It was turning out to be a great day. I got upgraded to First Class on the entire trip from Green Bay. We landed here in Memphis early, the cab ride to the Downtown Blue Monkey was nice. It was a beautiful day outside. Came home and got cleaned up, then headed off to the Shelby County Election Commission to pick up my petition. I was feeling good.

From there I headed back to the Downtown Monkey to pick up SMac. There was an extreme ice cream shortage that needed to be corrected, as well as some other errands. SMac’s been working crazy hours the past week covering for vacations and such. We were hoping to get done with everything a little early, then head to to house for some chill time before our dinner date with Miss Dabney, in celebration of her birthday.

We loaded up the car and headed down to the ONLY grocery store within spitting distance of downtown, Miss Cordelia’s. I’m still not sure why that’s the only grocery store downtown, or why the city hasn’t tried to get another one on the south side of downtown, or even why people would want to live so far away from a grocery store, but that’s inconsequential.

We were driving down Riverside Dr., a four lane road that leads to Mud Island, the Pyramid and an on ramp for I-40, when out of nowhere we were hit on the rear quarter-panel of the vehicle. According to people who had a better vantage point of the accident than I, the back end of the car flew up in the air, then landed and sent the car into a roll. We stopped rolling probably more because of a light pole than anything else.

The whole thing was really quite surreal. I never saw the car, but heard the impact. Instinctively, I closed my eyes, but sometime between the beginning of the roll and stopping I opened and closed my eyes. Not exactly sure why.

When the car finally came to a stop, I opened my eyes to see SMac’s side of the car on the ground. That left me suspended in a state that I can only compare to being suspended in mid-air by a fall arrest system…somewhat helpless. I managed to get myself unbuckled and SMac unbuckled and opened the driver side door with help from people who had witnessed the accident. I pulled myself out of the car and started trying to help SMac out. By then, witnesses had knocked the front window out and she was climbing out of the resulting hole.

What followed from there was extreme slow motion. MFD showed up on the scene, followed by a bike cop. Lots of witnesses and general onlookers, and an absolutely hysterical lady that hit us. I know she was sorry, but the drama was over the top. An hour after the accident she was still going. It wasn’t her fault her brakes didn’t work, even though she suspected they were faulty. She wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. Really, after the first five minutes, everyone got it.

After about 30 minutes, I started to get irritated. The MPD was done with the witnesses statements, so I thought I’d ask about what they saw. “So, just how Hollywood did the crash look?”, I asked. One witness, surprised by my general good humor and the very strange question answered, “I’ll tell you what, it was pretty spectacular. I thought you were going to go end over end, then all of the sudden, you started rolling.” Hollywood take note, my small focus group has confirmed that this is a neat looking car wreck. I suggest you use it in the next “Die Hard” film.

PawPaw showed up to give us a ride back to Midtown. We stopped at the Midtown Monkey to hug some necks and prove that we were ok to folks. About that time Butch showed up and I told him to take that damn ice cream off the menu, it’s just not worth it. I don’t think he got it.

Obviously, everyone’s fine, though the soreness is starting to set in, and I don’t have much of an appetite. Now it’s insurance adjusters and car shopping, some 4 years before I had any intention of doing so.

We missed Miss Dabney’s birthday, but we’re gonna make it up to her at some point.

I want to thank all the people who stopped and helped, the MPD and MFD, the people who designed the roll bar on the Honda Element, all the friends who called and emailed and made sure we were ok, and anyone I missed in the process.

I still think they need to take ice cream off the menu.