If my mother were dead, she'd be rolling over in her grave right now. As it is, my beloved sister may kill me for this stunt....
Last night, at just a few ticks before midnight, I was driving home from my sister's house on a nice Missouri back-road. Suddenly, I see a guy running toward my car on the shoulder, frantically waving his arms with his eyes too wide in the glare of my headlights.
Now, when I say shoulder, I really mean the foot-wide swath of gravel separating the asphalt from the grass. This guy is running up to my swiftly moving car with less than a foot of space to occupy without ending up in the ditch. Something is obviously wrong.
So, despite all the warnings and such, I pull over. I mean, it's midnight on a Sunday night on a nowhere highway in Missouri. Who's gonna set that up? What are the odds of a woman driving alone right then? *shrugs*
I pull over and roll down the window -- car still on and in gear, just in case. I'm sympathetic, not stupid. Leaning slightly out the window, I holler, "Need some help?"
I am instantly assured that I did the right thing. "Oh, no! I didn't mean to flag down a woman! You shouldn't have pulled over! I hope I didn't scare you!"
All said while the guy stays well back by my taillights, fully in view of my rear- and side-view mirrors. He's going out of his way to not scare me. *snorts* As if I scare so easily.
"No worries. What's the problem?"
"I swerved to miss a deer and ended up in the brush. I'm so freaked out right now. Thank you so much for pulling over, but you shouldn't have! You can just drive on if you want. I'm sure someone...you know...will be by...soon...."
We both know better. See the above reasons for pulling over in the first place. I pull forward a few feet into a driveway, park my car, hazards on, and get out to help.
Ironically enough, someone DOES pull over soon -- before we even get back to the poor kid's car. Two guys get out of a Jeep, and...get this...the kid moves to stand in front of me. *laughs* Good kid, but again, I can take care of myself, or I wouldn't have pulled over.
So, the new guys ask what's happened, and the kid tells them the same story, adding that he'd missed that telephone pole by less than a few feet, as we can see from his tracks. They ask if I was involved, and I said I'd come along after the fact and had pulled over to help. One of the guys says that was nice, but he could take care of things from here.
And shows a badge. *laughs* A county deputy. How lucky can you get? A cop at the scene! And a paralegal for a plaintiff's attorney, though he doesn't know that yet. Heh. Lucky bastard.
Anyway, I stick around as they step forward to look at the car. The poor kid hit a big rock and tons of brush -- enough to bog down his car so he couldn't get it out -- lost his oil pan at the very least, and I think he may have cracked his radiator, as he was leaking antifreeze pretty freely. But after I comment that we could probably push it out if he can get it into neutral, the cop turns around and tells me again that I can leave if I don't feel comfortable in the dark with three strange men alongside a relatively deserted country road.
Now, I'm actually hesitant to leave this nice kid alone with strangers (not that I'm not a stranger, but I'm at least a harmless one), even though one is probably actually a cop. But I don't say that. So...
"Actually, at this point, I'm kinda curious."
"Why?"
A grin. "I'm a paralegal. I'm good with details. I might come in handy later."
The kid laughs -- he's been a little panicked and freaked out up until now, so it's good that he's calmed down enough to think anything is funny -- and the cop just looks at me funny.
I turn to the kid, keeping an eye on the cop, and grin. "You got lucky. Two people pass by, and one's a cop while the other works for a lawyer."
Heh.I mean, you have one person who frequently works on accident reconstruction exhibits for trial, and another who can testify that you weren't drunk. *laughs* And cops, if you're in the right, make EXCELLENT character witnesses.
What a riot. How lucky can you get?
So, I stick around until the cop lets the kid use his cell phone to call his parents, then head off home. The whole thing took maybe a half hour.
But my mother would kill me if she knew. Heh. Thank God she doesn't usually read this journal, ne? And Sis?
*sheepish*
I don't ALWAYS stop for stuff like that, ne?