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There I am at a stoplight in Portsmouth, Rhode Island on the way to a typical RI breakfast of johnnycakes at Commons Lunch in Little Compton after an intensely satisfying but long morning of birding at Sachuest Point. Bam! I get rear ended. Sound of breaking glass all around. Fortunately it came from the other car, not the Auntmobile.
My car jerked forward. The car that hit me, inexplicably swerved (after it hit me) and lodged itself in a hillock alongside the driveway of a dog training/swimming pool supply place we happened to be in front of. The lady from the dog place calls the police. The driver of the other car can't open the driver's side door, neither can I. She gets out the passenger door and starts telling me it's the wet roads, she has no brakes, it's the wet roads, these roads sure are wet. She asks if my car is "hurt". I look it over. The rear bumper is falling off and the trunk is dented. There's a piece of her car (hard to tell what piece exactly) embedded in my bumper. At least nobody's hurt. The woman resembles nothing so much as one of the bizarre troll-like characters from Cold Fever. I half expect her to scream in Icelandic and disappear. But she doesn't.
A passerby stops, looks at the damage to her car and pronounces it drivable. He acts like he knows what he's talking about, despite the fact that the radiator is pushed in and oh yeah there a no brakes. He leaves.
The police arrive. They ask both of us to move our cars. They direct me off the main road onto a side street. Then they tell her to pull out of the driveway. She backs out into the street wildly and backs into the police car! The cops are yelling for her to stop. It gets surreal. The car finally stops. She tells the police she has no brakes. Can't blame it on the wet roads this time.
They collect licenses and registrations. They take statements.
The police call a tow truck. The woman insists the car is drivable because "he" said it is. Cop asks "who's 'he'?" She says "the witness". She says it has to be drivable because she has to pick up her mother at jai alai. Maybe she can use her mother's jai alai winnings to pay for the car.... The tow truck arrives.
The cop returns my license and registration and tells me where I can get a copy of the police report if I need it. I leave as the other car is being loaded onto the tow truck.
Once in the car and on the road again, I can't stop laughing. I laugh uncontrollably all the way to Little Compton.
The johnnycakes were damn good.
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