A Laugh a Minute: Dumped by a driver

I was hit by a car!

Now, please don’t think that by using an exclamation point I am trying to communicate excitement. If I won the lotto, I would say, “I won the lotto!” but believe me, I would be much more excited to win the lotto than be run over by a Pontiac. What I felt at the time of impact was less like winning the lotto and more like winning knee pain.

The accident was my fault, because I forgot the first rule of being a pedestrian, which is that a person who is driving a car is more likely to run over you than the other way around. I foolishly thought that since the pedestrian signal was lit and the automobile approaching was facing a red light, I could cross the street without tasting Pontiac.

As everyone knows, however, someone on a cell phone is exempt from the law that says “right turn on red after stop.” For people on cell phones, the law is “right turn on red after running over a newspaper columnist.”

I noticed the car before the driver noticed me and, performing an instantaneous geometrical calculation, realized I was just seconds away from having a new career as a hood ornament. This galvanized a reflexive response — when the situation is urgent, we humans have the ability to react with our spinal columns instead of our brains, like when we stick our finger in a pot on the stove to see if the water is hot and jerk our hands away before we register our stupidity.

This ability to function without using our brains goes a long way toward explaining the behavior of the U.S. Congress.

In my case, the reaction went like this:

Eyes: Uh, there’s some guy approaching in a Pontiac who is talking on his cell phone and not looking at us, plus there’s a woman across the street who looks a little like Halle Berry.

Knees: What? Let’s jump out of the way!

Spinal Column: You know, we’re just not into the whole reflex thing as much as we used to be.

Brain: Halle Berry?

I can’t say precisely which part of the car hit me, though I’m pretty sure it was the hard part. Luckily, I’ve had a lot of experience in falling down, having been the worst halfback in the history of football at Old Mission Junior High. The difference, I suppose, is that most of the kids who tackled me didn’t use a grille. So I fell sprawling on the pavement, exchanging skin for pain.

The driver stared down at me, shocked that I had interrupted his telephone call. Our eyes met, and, in an odd way, we bonded: me, the innocent victim, and he, the hit-and-run driver.

That’s right, hit-and-run, as in “I am too busy for traffic laws right now!” I rolled around to see if there were any other cars coming that might be exempt from the “stop for pedestrians lying in the street” rule due to cell-phone usage, and when I rolled back, my new friend in the Pontiac was already zipping around the corner.

Charitably, I thought perhaps he might just be pulling out of traffic and would soon be racing back to assist me. And maybe he did — he just chose to pull over several miles away.

I tried to decide what to do next. Should I jump up and chase him, or lie there and hope that Halle Berry would give me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? Once the car that has hit you has fled the scene, you are no longer an accident victim, you are just some nut lying in the street. I decided this wasn’t the best place for a nap, and stiffly got to my feet.

Amazingly, I was intact, or at least as intact as I’d been before I’d kissed the emblem of the Pontiac. Groaning dramatically in case Halle Berry had seen the whole thing, I limped over to the sidewalk, verifying that my driver had demonstrated via departure that he wanted an end to our relationship.

Oh well. I know he has a phone. Maybe he’ll call.

To write Bruce Cameron, visit www.wbrucecameron.com. To find out more about Bruce Cameron and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate at www.creators.com.

© 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.