System 13

Friday night, my wife and I, along with my nephew and his girlfriend, attempted to go to a comedy club about an hour away for dinner and an enjoyable evening. I’ve never really been the club sort of person, but my wife won the tickets when a radio station was giving them away (10th caller, etc.), so I figured, hey, sure, sounds like a good time.

We never quite made it there. 20 minutes or so before getting there, as we were driving down the road chatting, something peculiar happened: the driver’s window exploded. Weird, I know, but these things happen when a deer rams into the side of your car.

We’re still not entirely sure how it happened. My wife, the driver, says she very vaguely remembers seeing something out of the corner of her eye. I recall seeing a flash of brown before her window shattered, spraying glass into the car, mostly onto her. I got a face full of little chunks, as did those in the back seat; we all found quite a bit in our hair. My wife ended up having to be taken to a hospital to get checked out, as the driver’s sideview mirror had been ripped off and thrown into the car, smacking her in the face. Everyone else, other than being a bit shocked, was alright.

I say we’re not sure how it happened because of the “evidence”: there was deer slobber and hair on the hood of the car, deer hair all along the side of the car (driver’s door and driver’s side passenger door), and deer hair on the trunk. There was also a huge amount of deer hair in the car, mostly on my wife’s clothes. I’ve tried to figure out how it must have ran into our car – along our car? – to hit all of those spots, and I’m still stumped. I’m also baffled as to how we hit a deer and didn’t destroy our little car, or at least have more damage than one missing sideview mirror and one busted window. As far as we can tell, there’s not a single dent.

In comparison to many car accidents, including the hitting of deer, I realize ours was a rather minor affair; but I must say, it was one of the scariest things I’ve ever experienced. I still can’t get over how fast it all happened. I’ve read about the brain being unable to cope with how fast car accidents happen, but to actually experience that mental lag, that bewildered feeling of “what the hell just happened?!” – that’s a bit different than reading about it online. While it only lasted a few seconds, I went through a period of time in which I literally had no idea what had happened. I initially thought that, for whatever reason, the front windshield had shattered, even though I was looking right at it. I suppose I thought this because of the glass hitting me in the face; you don’t expect glass from the driver’s side to whack you in the face when you’re in the passenger seat. Then I panicked and checked my face, then my eyes, afraid that I’d go blind from the glass, even though I was looking around the car. In retrospect my reactions were really quite weird, but they felt right at the time.

Overall, for funniness, I rate our evening of “comedy” with a rating of 1, on a scale from 1 to 10. Oh, and Bambi.. well, Bambi’s on my list right now. You know the list.