I once drove a very white Volvo. It’s the only white car I’ve ever owned.
I loved the pearlescent finish, but as anyone who’s ever driven a white car can attest, every drop of mud screams for attention. If you live in a place like Oregon, you may as well forget about having a clean white car. Yeah, I know. The same is true of black cars.
One morning after a date night with dinner and a movie, I heard my wife calling from the garage in a weird tone.
“Um Mike. You need to come down here and take a look at this.”
“OK, after I brush my teeth.”
“No, you need to come downstairs right now.”
Crap — it’s not even 9am and I’m already in trouble for something, I lamented under my breath.
I went out and found her staring blankly at the front right fender, pointing. There was quite a bit of blood smeared all over it. In my locked garage. On the car that I drove last night.
Holy sh — I quickly replayed the events of the evening in my head.
“What time did we leave? How much did we drink with dinner? Did we stop anyplace on the way home?
Do you even remember driving home? Because I don’t.”
Hey — before you judge me: Even when I haven’t had anything to drink, a routine path home will often land me in my living room without any memory of the drive itself, as though I’d taken a teleportation scooter.
I’m a careful drinker, and I concluded that I wasn’t drunk the night before. But I couldn’t conceive of how we would have hit someone or something and not remember a damn thing the next day. And there was no dent, which made it all the more baffling.
After a few minutes of puzzlement, and then the dreadful realization that I was a really bad person, I decided to call the Portland police and to take whatever I had coming to me.
As the non-emergency phone rang, I pondered how I could so quickly become a blackout drinker, but without the long slow spiraling decline that I presumed would precede it. One minute I was a responsible driver, and the next moment I was a horrible person who made horrible mistakes.
I explained the story in great detail to the police, and they put me on hold. There was no Muzak; just the sound of my racing thoughts. I prayed that whoever I had hit was still alive. I wished I could rewind the clock and take back whatever I’d done.
After several long minutes, they came back on the line.
I expected them to ask me to come downtown for a talk. But instead, I learned that apparently there was a drunken fistfight on that block of SE Hawthorne the night before, and they surmised that one of the guys must have paused, leaned against my car, and bled a bit before continuing down the street.
Because of the dim lighting, and because it didn’t rain that night like it does on practically every other night, we simply didn’t notice the blood when we got into our car and drove away.
So I got my wish: The hands on the clock went backwards. I got a second chance, and I wasn’t a terrible person after all.
It’s a wonderful life.
SMUDGED POSTCARDS 