Shoup Airlines

How lucky can one guy get?

How many of you can raise your hand when I ask if you’ve been hit by a car? Okay, I see a few hands. About what I expected. How many of you have been hit by a car while riding a bike? Maybe a hand or two. It happens. Now, honestly, how many of you can say you’ve been hit by a car while running…on a well lit street…in a residential area…with some of the brightest and reflective clothes on?!? No one? I can now proudly and a bit sorely answer in the affirmative to all three.

-sigh-

I will give these kids the fact that it was dark, but that is the only thing I’ll give them. It was one of those frontage residential roads just off the main street. Well lit, as I mentioned, with a car approaching from the opposite direction. I noticed my shadow in front of me and realized a car was also coming up from behind. There are no sidewalks in this area, so I was in the street, but all the way to the right, in fact I was running in the gutter. The next thing I know a bumper is eating my right foot!?! MY RIGHT FOOT!! The foot nearest the curb!!! If the car had been any more to the right, he’d have straddled the curb!

Somehow the car is moving slow enough that as my ankle begins to buckle underneath the bumper, the kid realizes what is going on and stops. Surprisingly, I don’t even fall. Any faster and I’d probably be wishing I had medical insurance right about now. It’s about this point my brain finally produces the thought that, HOLY CRAP! I’m being run over!

With my heart and adrenalin already up there a mile into the run, you can imagine what it’s now at. I check my ankle tenderly, seems okay. The kid, can’t be more than 17, gets out and asks, “Dude! Are you okay? My response? MY RESPONSE?!

“Yeah. Are you okay?”

I’m nearly run over by a newly licensed, acne plagued, immature, stoned out of his mind, punk of a teen and all I’m concerned with is whether he’s all right!? What’s wrong with me!? Wait, don’t answer that.

His excuse? The windows are foggy. Well yeah, foggy with that pesky spliff induced cloud that can linger in a car.

There’s really nothing that can be done at this point. My ankle feels fine, they’re both rattled out of their minds and I just want to leave before I do something stupid to the kid. It doesn’t help that he keeps repeating, “My bad, dude. My bad.”

My only consolation is the look of his passenger. She’s frozen solid, has not moved a muscle since the car stopped and has this look on her face as if she has just peered into the depths of Hell as envisioned by an unrestrained Tim Burton with the usual musical accompaniment of Danny Elfman.

“Look, it was an accident. Just get back in the Mystery Machine with the rest of the gang, Shaggy. I’ll be okay.”

I finished the run, thinking just how lucky I was. Yet again! What’s next? Getting hit by a car while I’m reading a book in my living room?!