notafraidtomerge:

On the morning of Christmas eve, someone hit our brand new car, dragging a long gouge into the driver’s side door, so deep you could see sunlight through it.

Yesterday, repairs finally complete and with a rare day off, I drove from the body shop in Pasadena to Koreatown to pick up my wife from work. Five blocks later, a guy blew through an intersection where he had a stop sign but we didn’t. I slammed the brakes as hard as I could, calculated that he’d hit the front of the car but not my door, braced for impact, and spared a nanosecond to be grateful that as our Christmas present to ourselves we’d lowered our deductible considerably. 

And then… nothing. No impact that I could feel. No crunching of metal. We were both only going maybe 30 and though it wasn’t far to stop I guess my new brakes are as good as they should be. I got out because I couldn’t quite believe it, but there was only a little smudge on my front bumper that rubbed right off. I waved at the guy and we drove off, a little whiplashed and adrenaline-soaked.

Two hours later at one of our favorite LA restaurants, we shrugged when we were seated at an inside table even though we’ve almost always eaten out on the patio there, and the place was still mostly empty. And then just before dessert one of our favorite TV actors was escorted by the TV-famous chef from the patio out back to his car.

Which was parked, of course, right next to ours.

i have this other place i’ve been stashing some writing lately…