Life flashes in front of your eyes one frame at a time

In the summer when I was five or six years old, I remember sitting in the grass in the back yard, seething about some annoyance. I was peeved. Really peeved. About something. 

My Dad got home from work and came outside still in his work clothes and sat in the grass next to me. He didn’t say anything. He just sat there for a few minutes, and then, looking into the trees, leaned over and nudged me with this shoulder.

“What,” I said. Short, clipped, the anger of a five year old.

“Wanna see a trick?”

I didn’t look at him. “What?” Still clipped. 

He looked around in the grass for a moment, and then pulled a fat blade from the green, prickly carpet. He fiddled with it and placed it between his thumbs and then put it up to his face and blew. It made a screech like a train whistle and I jumped.

“Wow! How’d you do that?” 

Anger forgotten. To this day I don’t remember what I’d been mad about.

Yeah, Dad… how did you do that?

Deja Root Beer

This afternoon I went to the vending machine at work and discovered they'd stocked it with real brown glass bottles of IBC root beer for one dollar. Cool.

At the first swig I was catapulted back 35 years to my favourite family tradition: Every spring, usually in late April or early May, my whole family would get together on a Sunday evening and retreat to the cool shadowed basement to cook up a batch of homemade root beer.

Amidst the washer and dryer and the gigantic concrete wash sink that was bolted to the cement wall, Dad would bring out the cases of empty glass bottles, our huge 10-gallon pickling crock, the hoses and bags of shiny new bottle caps and lay them out on the cement basement floor. Mom would fill the sink with scalding hot water and all the bottles went in the bath to clean out any bacteria (and possibly spiders) and my brothers and I would put them on the drying rack that dad made out of a plank with a forest of wooden dowels growing out of it.

Meanwhile, dad made the root beer. He filled the crock with water, sugar, real root beer extract and active yeast and mixed it all up with a huge wooden spoon. It took about a half hour, stirring slowly, for all the sugar to dissolve. By then the bottles would be dry.

Dad used a red rubber piece of tubing to siphon the root beer into the bottles, making sure to leave a space for "growing room" at the top. He then handed the filled bottle to me so I could carefully place one of the bottle caps on top, and I'd hand it to my oldest brother so he could use the long-handled bottle cap crimper to seal it tight. Then my middle brother would take the filled, sealed bottle, wipe it off with a towel and place it back in the wooden crate. After an hour, we had about 100 newly-minted bottles of homemade root beer, give or take a few, lined up in the crates like little brown soldiers.

While Mom cleaned out the pickle crock in the big sink, Dad and us three kids would nestle the cases of root beer in the dark, cool space beneath the stairs in the basement and cover them up with a furniture blanket to catch any glass if one of the bottles should burst. We always lost a few, and sometimes we would hear one blow if we were in the kitchen when it exploded. There they sat for 30 days in the dark so the yeast could ferment and make the fizz. (No mean feat in Colorado, where the altitude could cause cakes to bake flat like goopy chocolate tortillas.)

The day after school let out for the summer in early June, Dad would wake early and take out six bottles and sneak them into the back of the refrigerator. We would have a great feast that lasted all day, with roasted chicken, potato salad and fresh corn on the cob from the local farmer who sold it 'thirteen-ears-for-five-bucks' from a rickety stand right on the edge of his cornfield. We would make hand-cranked ice cream in the afternoon, and have watermelon-seed spitting contests in the back yard. Dad would take the train out of its shed where it slept through the long winter and spend the day tinkering and adjusting the engine and sending us kids out to clear any grass clumps from the train tracks. He would never let it run on that first day -- he just took it out so he could check it over and get us kids excited about it all over again. The first 'train day' always came later.

When the sun was going down and the fireflies were just starting to spark little wavering spotlights in the trees, Dad would bring out the ancient, thick art-glass mugs filled with scoops of ice cream, and with much fanfare and anticipation, he would open that first bottle of root beer. It was always a tense moment... would it be fizzy and foamy or would it be flat?

But always, with a satisfying *pop*, the bottle cap would go flying, we all cheered, and Dad would pour the root beer over the ice cream in each mug, insert a long-handled sundae spoon and a long straw, and the five of us would enjoy the rewards of our labours in the summer grass. We always agreed it was the best batch of root beer ever.

And thus, Summer officially began.

Smart Car vs Jetta

It happened. My nightmare. My Smart car, Maxwell, was hit.

On my way home from work on Wednesday, January 13th, I was in a line of cars waiting for a red light (I was 5th or 6th in line) when I looked into my rearview mirror and saw a car coming up behind me. I could see the top of the driver’s head, which told me he was texting!

I watched in horror and realized he wasn’t looking up to check the road. ‘Crap,’ I thought. ‘He’s not going to stop.’ (Actually, it wasn’t ‘crap‘, but this is a family-friendly blog…)

I took a deep breath, and tried not to seize up for the impact. He was going about 35 MPH when he hit me square in the rear. Then he looked up. The collision pushed me forwards about two feet and I rammed into the pickup truck that was stopped in front of me. HARD.

I sat there for a moment. I didn’t feel any pain, no whiplash, no bumps or bruises. ‘No, no, no, this didn’t happen… I don’t want to get out and see what he did to my car…’

Shaking, I backed out of traffic and pulled over to the side, out of the lane of cars. The 1996 Jetta that hit me had already pulled over and I parallel parked behind him and immediately snapped a camera-phone picture of his car, making sure to get a clear shot of the license plate. The pickup truck pulled over and parked ahead of the Jetta.

Deep breath. I got out of the car and walked to the rear. The first thing I noticed was the rear bumper panel was exactly where it should be. I could see the crease where it had folded in upon impact and then popped back in place. The plastic cap over the tow-hole was broken off, and the plastic around the tow hole was gouged, and slightly cracked. My exhaust pipe looked like it was bent down, and the black side bumpers were creased as well.

The driver of the Jetta was apologizing. The pickup driver came back to see if we were okay. He looked at my car, then at me. “Whoa. Are you all right?”

“I’m okay. Are you all right?”

He looked at my car again and kind of chuckled. “Um, yeah. I’m fine. So’s my truck. Are you sure you’re okay? Totally that guy’s fault.” He went to talk to the Jetta guy.

(Judge me by my size, do you?)

I walked around to the front of Max, while the Jetta driver was exchanging info with the truck driver. My front license plate was embedded into the bumper panel and the license plate frame was shattered. The black plastic grate beneath the bumper panel was creased, much like the rear bumper had been. However, all of the bumper panels appeared to be aligned right. I was stunned by the lack of major damage, especially considering the force of the impacts. The front end was damaged more than the rear, but it looked largely cosmetic.

I walked all the way around Max. The doors looked straight. None of the side body panels appeared to be displaced. The rear hatch opened and closed normally. I couldn’t believe it.

After writing down the Jetta driver’s name, phone number and insurance information, I got back in my car. The police weren’t called — in LA they suggest that if there are no injuries and all parties have exchanged insurance info, you don’t have to call the police unless there’s a dispute. The Jetta driver already admitted his fault to both me and the truck driver in between multiple apologies and was very cooperative, so we didn’t call the police. Besides, when I phoned in the claim to my insurance agent, I would give a recorded statement then, so there really was no point.

Max hesitated just a moment when I turned the key and my heart skipped a beat. But then he started like always. No knocks. No weird grinding noises. I carefully put him in first gear and pulled back into traffic. The front end wanted to pull slightly to the right, but not sharply. Other than that, it felt normal.

I drove home on surface streets like a myopic old lady wearing her husband’s bifocals. The first time I had to use the brakes, they kind of went ‘thug-thug-thug’ as if there was a flat spot on the disc somewhere, but since I had been braking when Jetta guy hit me, they probably had gotten torqued. But if I went easy on them, it stopped.

I’m still waiting for the estimate from the body shop my dealership sent me to, and the dealership wants to do some testing as well. They said something about having to check the airbags — they didn’t deploy, and frankly I’m sure they didn’t need to because the seat belt did its job. I spoke to the body shop today and they assured me that Max was indeed repairable, and when I got him back he would be every bit as perfect as he was before the accident. Then they gave me a “cautious” estimate of $1500, including labor. The Jetta guy’s insurance company will be overjoyed.

I’m completely impressed about the safety features of Smart. Even more so than I was before. The rear bumper body panel behaved exactly as described… it folded inwards and dampened the impact, and then popped back into place. The super-duper body frame felt like it was holding me in a strong cradle when the Jetta hit me. It felt solid. The front bumper panel took the impact of the pickup’s bumper and squished inwards, effectively slowing the hit so I wasn’t slammed around inside the car.

So I’m driving around LA in the insurance rental PT Cruiser (I could park Max in the back seat for Pete’s sake). I figured this would be a good time to do a CostCo run and pick up a side of beef or a piano or something.

But I’ll tell you all right now… as long as Smart Cars are available in America, I will own one.