[Originally posted on 10.5.08] Sometimes car accidents can be…well, not too bad. Sometimes they can be shrugged off with no cops, no insurance, no injuries, no nothin’. I learned this when I was 18 or 19, and I’ve never forgotten the lesson. Not everything that goes badly needs to be catastrophic.
Four of us had done an all-nighter in Manhattan, wandering around the streets on mescaline, the usual West Village-East Village walk-around, not much cash, soaking up the energy.
We drove back to Connecticut around 5 am, the light starting to break. And somewhere around Rye, or right before the Connecticut border, we came around a curve and there was this beige Volkswagen Beetle lying on its side, the owner standing nearby, looking more or less unruffled and going “hmmm.”
We immediately pulled over, put on the flashers, got out and ran over and helped the guy right it. One, two, three…done. Quick thanks, hand shakes all around. The bug (which had scratches but no serious scrapes or dents) started right up and he took off. We did the same. It was semi-dangerous standing near a curve, of course, but one of us stood 75 feet south to wave off traffic. The whole deal took maybe 90 seconds…okay, two minutes.
My friends and I barely spoke of the episode later, that morning or the next day or over the weeks and months that followed. It happened and that was that.