Not My Fault

Ever gone through a period of time when accidents happened to you that weren’t your fault? I went through one of those periods awhile back, and because of it, for a while, family and friends acted weird every time I got behind the steering wheel of a car.

In fact, it got so bad that any time it was suggested that I do the driving they’d all break into a sweat, shake like a diabetic coming off a sugar high, and start reciting the Lord’s Prayer, while firmly grasping a rosary . . . and some of them were atheist!

They said it was because I hadn’t been doing too well avoiding accidents, and though I kept telling them that, no matter what the police said, the wrecks weren’t my fault I was never able to calm their fears.

Now, the first wreck happened while driving across a bridge in Branson, Missouri. I was driving along in my truck when the tape I was listening to (yes, this was back in “olden times” when we listened to cassette tapes in our vehicles) ended. After the tape was ejected from the deck, I decided to put it back in the cassette storage box, where it belonged.

So, reaching over to the passenger side of my pick-up to get hold of the box, I momentarily lost sight of the road (Translation: I had to reach so far across the truck for the cassette holder that my head dipped below the dashboard).

Now, it couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds to sight the cassette box, reach for it, grip that sucker, and bring it closer to me, but that’s all the time it took.

BAM! I rear ended a soda truck.

Of course, the truck I hit wasn’t even scratched. Mine, on the other hand, had over $2,000.00 worth of damage.

Why wasn’t this accident my fault you ask? Well, as I told the investigating officer, the accident was an act of God. No, really.

You see, I’m genetically impaired: my arms are too short for fetching tape holders clear across my automobile. With longer arms I would have been able to reach that confounded case, while at the same time keep my head high enough to see out of the windshield. I rest my case.

The second accident during that period of bad luck wasn’t my fault either. It was the fault of my mamma and middle son.

Middle son and I were out running errands. As we pulled up to a stop light at a busy intersection, middle son and I were carrying on a conversation. Well (and this is where my mamma’s part in all of this comes into play), mamma taught me to always look people in the eye while conversing with them, and that’s exactly what I was doing, looking middle son right in the eye. . .as I drove right through the red light in said intersection.

BAM! We were T-boned by a van traveling at about 50mph.

“I wondered what you were doing, running that red light and all,” said middle son, as we commenced to get out of our now inoperable truck.

“If you saw I was about to run the light, why didn’t you say something?” I asked.

"Because,” he answered, “you don’t like to be told how to drive. So, when I saw the van coming and realized you weren’t going to stop I closed my eyes.”

He sure picked a fine time to start caring about things that bug me.

Anyway, when the police officer asked me what happened, I told him the accident wasn’t my fault. I mean, if mamma hadn’t been so persistent in teaching me proper etiquette and if middle son wouldn’t have so tight-lipped about me running the stop light (not to mention closing his eyes when he saw the van approaching), there wouldn’t have been a wreck--Mr. policeman didn’t see it that way.

Ooooh but I had another good reason the wreck wasn’t my fault. You see, since my head was turned toward middle son just before the wreck, you could say the son in my eyes.