Psychedelic

This week in my writing class we had to spend five minutes during class writing about a car accident. So I had to review the car accidents in my life. Twice tree limbs have crashed onto my car while parked causing hundreds of dollars of damage - I don't think those count as accidents. Twice I have been rear ended with no damage aside from the fact I could read their license plate number on my bumper for a while - those don't really count either. About 8 years ago I had my divorce accident. Everyone I know who has been divorced had a car accident during the process. Mine happened on Hwy. 47 when a young man, on his way to the spring formal dance and had his friend and the two dates in the car (both wearing strapless formals), decided to pull out from his stop sign right in front of me. Another car approaching from the south (like me) was making a right hand turn and the young driver couldn't see beyond the van so he assumed the lane was clear. I slammed on my brakes and pulled to the right and almost missed him. I was going 45 in a 50 mph zone. Everybody was fine. The girls were cold and snotty because they "were going to be late and they had reservations!" That turned out to be a strange situation because the next day a man showed up in my garage asking me about the accident. In his hand he had the police report. I didn't know you can get police reports of accidents just by asking He was the father of the driver who struck me. He said he saw my tire tracks, saw how hard I tried to avoid the accident, and thanked me because his son could have been killed. He asked if I would mind not informing his insurance company. I said I would tell my insurance company and if they wanted to work with him instead of the other company, I didn't care. Turns out he was a fleet manager of a major newspaper and might have lost his position if his insurance company found out about his son's accident. Part of his job was to investigate auto accidents. Stranger still was that he told me 3 times his daughter (not the son who had the accident) wasn't going to get her license until she was 18. I don't know why she had to be punished for her brother's mistake. Anyway, the accident I wrote about in class was the 1973 accident. I was traveling to the U of M, going north on Cleveland approaching Roselawn, when I saw a lilac bush in full bloom and a psychedelic mailbox. Boom! I smashed into the truck ahead of me. I was so surprised. The truck driver was nice. We exchanged information. My right fender crumpled and rubbed my right front tire if I turned left. So I had to figure out a way to get home making only right hand turns. Three rights do make a left but that was a lot of thinking for me because I was shaken by the accident. I made it home. We pulled the fender away from the tire so I could turn both right and left. Eventually I had the car repaired and painted orange (butterscotch gold). But as I was writing the story, I tried to imagine what the psychedelic mail box looked like. I vaguely remember pink and purple colors but not much else. So now I have to ask myself, why am I painting my mailbox in such odd ways? I went from yellow with large red polka dots to orange with blue frogs. Am I trying to cause an accident?