Brian In A Ditch

Where we live used to be the beach sev­eral mil­lion years ago. A friend of mine has actu­ally found sharks teeth in a lot behind his home. In a sec­tion of woods in our town there is an area called Sand River. It is a big run of sand that looks like, well, a river and it is mov­ing. You can’t actu­ally see it move because the time scale is more geo­log­i­cal than human, but it is flow­ing. If things work out just right my wife’s and my invest­ment in this home could be a great thing. All we need is for global warm­ing to con­tinue such that Antarc­tica melts and viola, beach front property.

An errand needed run­ning, don’t remem­ber what, but I had just enough time to accom­plish it before din­ner was ready, even tak­ing into account that I was going to drive the long way. I bar­reled into a left turn I’d taken a hun­dred times before, next thing I knew I was in a 4 wheel drift. Yikes! Heed­ing ear­lier dri­ver train­ing or instinct I steered in the direc­tion of the skid. About the time I got the steer­ing wheel all the way to the right, I’d scrubbed enough speed so that trac­tion returned, plunk, straight into the ditch on the right side of the road. The ditch I landed in was nicely v-shaped, 15 foot deep, very sandy and free of trees. I came to a gen­tle halt half way down as the car slowly set­tled to the axles. For­tu­nately the road was fairly deserted for two rea­sons, one, I didn’t run into any­one while I was tem­porar­ily on the wrong side of the yel­low line and two, nobody saw my stu­pid­ity. I knew there would be no back­ing the car out of this one. I climbed out of the ditch and started walk­ing to a quick-stop place about a ½ mile back to make some phone calls.

The first call was the hard one. It was to my wife to let her know I was going to be a “lit­tle” late. She took it bet­ter than I expected, maybe she was in shock. Not that I hadn’t done any­thing stu­pid before, ’cause I have, but that I just dri­ven our 18 month old, and only, car into a ditch. About the time I was call­ing my wife, some­one with a cell phone was call­ing the local police to let them know was a car off the side of the road.

The sec­ond call was the expen­sive one. It was to a tow­ing out­fit to come reel me out of the sand trap. I told him where the car was and where I was and he said wait there he’d pick me up. Mean­while a police car had arrived at the scene and ran the license plate, which was con­ve­niently angled up for easy view­ing, to find out who owned it. About the time I was call­ing the tow truck, the police offi­cer was call­ing my wife.

His call was only a few min­utes after my call so my wife assumed it was me again. By then the shock had worn off and the mad had taken over. When the police offi­cer asked her why her car was in a ditch, she laid into him. “Dinner’s ruined… when he gets home… etc., etc.” When she calmed down enough, he asked where I was and she told him.

The tow truck and the police cruiser arrived at the quick stop around the same time. The offi­cer asked me if that was my car in the ditch back there and I told him it was. He asked how it got there and I explained what hap­pened. He then told me that he would ordi­nar­ily give me a ticket for “too fast for con­di­tions,” but hav­ing just got­ten off the phone with my wife he felt I was in enough trou­ble already and decided to let me off with a warning.

Within a cou­ple min­utes the tow truck had the car freed from it sandy park­ing spot and my Visa card freed of around $80. The car escaped with only minor scratches under the mouth which were hardly notice­able and a bro­ken plas­tic piece that cost $6.82. I on the other hand, am just now, eight years later, able to go on errands all by myself.