On Friday I was in a car accident. Not a serious one mind, just a rear-ending as I was approaching a roundabout. It was a car ‘incident’ really, what with it being very clearly the fault of the driver who hit me. As I got out, visibly shaken, to exchange insurance information with the other driver, I realised that this was something I had never had to do before. So I didn’t really know what I was doing. Plus we were pulled over to the side of a very busy roundabout at rush hour. Negotiations were strained.
When the other driver got out to check the damage, I asked her if she was okay. But the woman seemed more concerned with her insurance premium than whether I was alright. So I was angry when she immediately said, “You’re not going to say the damage cost more to repair than it really did, are you?” Clearly she was stressed as well, or she was just a terrible person. Remaining noncommittal about her desire to keep Messrs. Aviva and Churchill out of this, I noted everything down then drove away.
As I sat in my now dented car a little while afterwards, drinking a calming frappucino, I wondered how many other things I think I know how to do but probably don’t. I mean, I took her name and phone number, her car make, model and registration, and the name of her insurance company. But someone told me afterwards that all I really needed was the number plate. I have no idea which is right – all I know is that you’re supposed to exchange ‘details’. Details? Like favourite film, book and sandwich filling?
I’ve not really thought about what that means before. Though perhaps I do have a tendency to avoid key pieces of information. When someone on the phone tells me how to find something like a specific book or a restaurant, once I am moving off in the right direction I subconsciously blank the rest of the details and eventually have to ask for them again. So the idea of exchanging details seemed simpler than it actually was.
I’ve been driving for four years and I’ve only just had to deal with something like this. So what about other things I’ve been doing for a while, like ordering takeaway or getting my hair cut? Are they actually buffalo wings? What happens if they want to wash my hair? Tack on the fact that pedestrians kept coming perilously close to my wing mirror whilst carrying unwieldy bags, alongside the whole graduating in two weeks with few prospects thing, and I genuinely felt a little bit overwhelmed. Or perhaps it was all the caffeine and sugar and chunks of ice talking. I sat there for a bit, then I stallioned-up and drove home.
Later on I felt better. I felt like I’d achieved something. I remembered that even if I only live to be 42, I’ve still got half my life left to discover lots of other unknown unknowns – things I don’t know I don’t know. I also felt like I could empathise with the type of people I had previously scorned, people who are troubled by things I wouldn’t previously have called problems – like exam stress for example. In an effort to stop this sounding like Agony Chris’ Guide to Personal Harmony though, I’ll just say that I’m still pretty smug and superior most of the time. I’ve just got post-traumatic stress disorder, and whiplash, and scurvy, and rabies, that’s all.