Through the Eyes of a Delivery Goddess |
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I'm a real stickler for keeping track of exactly what's behind me when I'm driving, even though I typically don't use my rearview mirror. As a matter of fact, I don't even have a rear view mirror in my current car. It fell off and I've never replaced it. It is legal to go without a rearview mirror provided you have a mirror on each front door (side) of your car. For instance, coming home from a job a few years ago, the parkways here in Pittsburgh are either 65 mph or 3 mph, depending on what time of day it is, and how close to the city you are. I am not a quick responder; I do not have the best reflexes. I tend to leave lots of room between myself and the guy in front of me, especially when you know that the traffic could come to a screaching hault at any second. One afternoon, I left extra space in front of me, but was watching my rear view mirror very closely. If the three cars behind me had been watching, they would have seen the forth car failing to stop in time, which caused a chain reaction. Each unsuspecting driver behind me was hit from behind, but because I was watching, and because I had left extra space in front of me, I drifted into the empty space in front of me, preventing the car behind me from joining me in my back seat. Keeping that in mind, while delivering pizzas one afternoon, I was behind a conversion van with a metal tire cover mounted on the back door. Now, because I prefaced this story, you know where this is going. I noticed that the car behind me had just turned off (onto the road where the folks were parked that hit me with a rock one night delivering papers), so I knew there was no one behind me. I heard the van in front of me hit something, but could not distinguish the sound. I sounded metalic, but not big enough to be a car. I immediately dropped the car into nuetral and focused my eyes on the mirror on my driver's door to make sure no one was coming behind me. I was reaching for the hazzard lights when my head whiplashed against the back of my seat. I looked up to see my car bouncing away from the back of the conversion van. He had stopped in the middle of a main road, put his van in reverse, and backed up to see what he'd hit. I never had time to get my own car into reverse before he hit me. By now, the hazzard lights were on, so I pulled the emergency brake as a very confused senior gentleman stumbled out of the driver's seat in front of me. I said twice, "Sir, are you OK?" He came back around and looked at the hood of my car, which had a very small dip in the hood, now, right where a hood ornment would go. I told him not to worry about it - it's a delivery car and it's meant to get beaten up. I could tell he'd hurt his neck, so I asked again if he was OK. He nodded as we both walked to the front of his van to see a piece of angle iron laying across the road in front of him. I reached down and dragged it off of the road while he explained that he couldn't figure out what he hit. My first thought was, "well, if you don't know what you hit, by all means, drop the car in reverse, hit the gas and run over it again." We laughed for a brief minute, he confirmed that he was OK, and we both got back in our vehicles and continued on our way. By the time I was getting back in my car, another car was finally coming behind me, but I thought it synchronicic that no cars had come for the five minutes we were out of our cars bumbling around. He was obviously NOT aware of any cars behind him, since he never thought twice about backing up in the middle of a main road. Turned out to be good thing that we never had the hood fixed - wait until you read the next installment ... you will NOT believe it! |