Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Teen drivers = menace

I admit that I too was a teenage driving menace, but at least I wasn't a menace to other drivers (meaning, I never hit one). However, there is a certain curb, and a certain 18-foot tall chain link fence and a certain soccer field that would have labeled me as a menace for sure.

Back on point. A few weeks back, S was cruising down Main Street with C and PK. A 16-year old in a 1990 1-ton pickup truck failed to yield and made a left turn from the other direction, right into S' lane.

She hit the kid so hard, she spun him around and flipped the truck on it's side. He climbed out, but the truck, had it not been on it's side, was still driveable. The front of our car, a 99 Honda CRV, was a Nascar spectators wet dream.

No one was hurt, and C was more amazed that we had "ballons" in our car (airbags deployed) than she was scared.

The police report cited the "teenage menace" as the cause of the wreck, and his insurance company promptly coughed up a check. We were sad to say goodbye to our CRV, since we bought it new when C was born and it was our first "family car."

The search for a replacement car was on, and soon we found ourselves cruising around town in a low-mileaged used car, courtesy of the Honda dealer in Edmond, some 60 miles away.

Here's where the small town moment occured.

The other day, a family pulls up, smiling and gesticulating madly at us to roll down our window. We heard the driver yell out, "hey, you bought my car!"

Turns out our cars previous owner use to live in our small town, had traded it in on a new car several months ago, and recognized it as we passed each other down the main drag. He no longer lives in our town, but was passing through on his way north.

So, what are the chances that the same car ended up back in the same small town, 60 miles and several months later, and that both the previous owners and current owners would both happen to be in that car, on the same road, at the same intersection, in that same small town?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You may recall that we had a similar experience in the islands a few years ago. Like C, J was more amazed than scared. My particular menace was a drunk who couldn't stay in his lane coming up the hill, but he was driving a Sidekick and I was driving M's Bronco. Guess which car drove away and which one was pronounced dead at the scene?

OKDad said...

Lot's to be said for "heavy metal" in the way of protection on the road.

Tammy Wilson said...

As far as the odd coincidence, we went on a family vacation to New Mexico several years ago. My dad's can broke down and we were forced to purchase a crappy mini van from the only dealership for miles. As we were unloading our stuff from our van into the mini van, this guy comes up and says he wants to buy it. My dad tells him the motor's cracked. The guy says he has motors layin' all over, no problem. Mind you, this was after an all day attempt by my dad to find a motor - the guy walks into the dealership and buys our van while we're still standing there. A year later, we're going to NM again and we see our van sitting across the street from the same dealership where we left it. It turns out that someone bought it from that guy and used it to run a water route for a while and it broke down or something and ended up where we left it - and people had even come back from various trips and told us they'd seen our van in New Mexico(it had a big logo on it from my dad's business, hard to miss). Anyway - the next week my dad called the dealership and made arrangements and drove back there and towed it back home. Weird indeed.