The Accident

I went to the CanAsian's wedding last Saturday, where I was one of maybe 25 non-Asian folks. But even though we didn't speak the same language as a good quarter of the party, the other chiros and I had a good time. We even had a running joke that I was one of the tallest people in the room (actually, kind of true).

I also joked with the CanAsian that we needed to see Grudge 2 together, because he protected me during the first one with some sort of Asian forcefield, and now that I live alone, I could be prey to the little boy ghost in the stairwell, and no one wants that.

All of this was said in good fun, and as Asian friends were involved with the joking, I didn't feel bad. But I clearly angered some gods or something.

Sunday morning I woke up and watched some TV. Then I did some work around the house. At some point in the afternoon, a few hours before I needed to get ready for work, I went to my car and drove to pick up my laundry (Yes, I drop my laundry off, no, I do not want to do it myself ever again, and yes, I even give them my underwear. Now, do you want to hear about laundry, or do you want to hear about the rest of this story?) The laundromat is approximately 3 blocks from my house.

I pulled onto my street to go around the block and park in front of my door, mostly because I'm lazy and didn't want to walk very far with all the laundry. A guy was getting into his mercedes, so I pulled around his open door.

Across the street and a little further down, going in the other direction, another guy was getting out of his car to show one of the apartments in my building to some girl.

As I made my way past the fairly standard obstacles, another car came speeding down my street. And this is where it all happened in the slow motion that you read about in the books. The speeding blue Honda civic slammed into the realtor's car door and bounced...into my rear tire, knocking off my hubcap...and causing me to bounce...into the mercedes door.

We all get out of the car to get a look at the wild driver. He's a bit freaked out, probably because his airbag went off. He's not even talking very much, and seems short of breath.

He's Asian.

Turns out he's not talking much, because he doesn't have a very good command of the English language. Or driving skills for that matter, if the large dents his Honda had previously suffered are any indication. The realtor's door will no longer close, so it's taped up with a trashbag on the side of the road. The mercedes will close, but it won't lock, and it's not nearly as pretty as it was. My car has the least damage (I like to think because I was doing the least wrong), but the Honda was pretty much undrivable.

The driver babbled along in some foreign tongue, and then it hit me. Asian. Small people at the wedding. Grudge 2. Something about sprinkling soy sauce in front of my door for protection. The gods were not pleased about the previous night's jokes, and now I was being punished. And they appear to still be mad, because the very next day, some big SUV or something knocked off my driver's side mirror and shattered the glass.

I'm resisting the urge to use the phrase "car-mic retribution," but you know it would totally fit.