Use Your Words - Blonde Moments and Accidents

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once, and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

police ~ bush ~ hide-a-bed ~ suffering ~ bald spot ~ rancid

They were submitted by Climaxed - thanks, Jenniy!

As I was hinting in last month's UYW post, things didn't exactly return to normal around here.

So it was a Tuesday night. You can read about our super tight schedule on Tuesdays here. I basically have half an hour to pick up Colin, make dinner and have him change and leave for gym class.

Everything was going well, we just pulled into our parking garage. I saw that my neighbor was backing out of her space. My remote was acting up, and I had to click several times until my door was finally beginning to open.

My neighbor was backing up, slowly as well. In fact so slowly that I figured she was waiting for me to disappear into my space.

The whole time I was standing there, with the engine running, waiting for my door to open enough so I could get in.

When she got closer and closer, I honked. She was still backing up until...

When we all got out, her 5yo looked at both of our cars and exclaimed "oh, sh**!!!"

Right. To me this was all there was to it. It was sh** - and it happened.

My neighbor was super confused. "I didn't see you at all. I was operating my remote for the garage door. What should we do? We need to get to swim practice."

Sure, we need to get going as well. Don't worry, it's just a fender bender. Imagine there was a kid running around that you didn't see? We'll talk later, take care!

A couple of hours later she and her husband rang our bell and wanted to talk, I was already in my PJs and didn't really know what to say except that I was gonna call my insurance company in the morning, they would know how to handle it.

Her husband said a couple of things that really baffled me. Like "as we can't really know what happened, and who was to blame, because clearly you must have bushwhacked her, why don't we do the neighborly thing, and everyone pays for their own damage? No need to call the police or anything."

So he thinks it is my favorite thing to sneak up on cars in order to get hit because I have too much time on my hands, and I need the trouble to take my car to the shop? Nope.

I am no expert, but as far as I know, usually the one backing up is to blame as a default, especially if she claims not to have seen me. Hello? My car is super red and super loud, how can she not have seen or heard me?

Also as my car is super new, and repairs won't be cheap, wouldn't the neighborly thing be to say "so sorry I bumped into you, let me own up to it and give you my insurance info because that's what we have insurance for in the first place?!"

Anyway, the next day their insurance company told them that my damages would be fully covered by their liability insurance, end of story.

That's how, for the duration of the repair, I ended up driving this baby here, and it caused a blonde moment.

After I installed C's car seat, I got in and wanted to start the engine. Nothing.

I tried again. Nothing.

I got out, walked back to the shop's office and told the guy with the bald spot that I was having trouble starting the engine. He must have tried very hard not to laugh.

"Lady, I'm pretty sure the engine is running just fine, you just can't hear it. Hybrids don't make any noise."

Now THAT is a dangerous thing on the street! And in our parking garage, for that matter!!! (Read more dangerous stories, told by talented writers, using only six words over here @ Coach Daddy's!)

Whenever I was approaching kids on the sidewalk, I opened the car window so they could at least hear my radio blasting!

As I was saying, apart from being disappointed by my neighbor's hubby's less than classy approach, nothing really bad happened.

This unknown motorcyclist wasn't so lucky.

My friends spent their day doing a bike tour in the mountains. Not super high up, just about 1,500m = 5,000 feet. On the Pragel Pass they came across an accident of another biker who must have fallen just a minute or two ago, for no apparent reason.

He was conscious, and even though he couldn't get up on his own, he refused that they called an ambulance. "I'll drive home on my own, don't be silly", he said.

They called one all the same, and when he lost consciousness and seemed to be having trouble breathing, they canceled the ambulance and called for a rescue chopper.

At the scene of the accident there was no cell phone reception, so both times they asked other bikers who were just approaching to drive until they could make the phone call.

Photo Credit: Hansueli Wild

In the meantime the man had stopped breathing. Even though the helicopter arrived promptly, and my friends have been doing CPR until the paramedics arrived, after two rounds of what I assume was dopamine, and more resuscitation efforts, the 53 year old biker was declared dead.

"Most probably he must have been suffering a heart attack" the doc said. "This might have caused the accident in the first place."

So I'll repeat what I keep saying: life is short, make it a good one!

Follow your dreams, hug your loved ones, drink the full-flavoured wine, wear the nice dress, don't sweat the small stuff, eat your chocolate before it becomes rancid, and for God's sake, sleep in a comfy bed, and not some hide-a-bed that ruins your back (apologies, I had to use my words!)

Now go find out what my friends' words were, and what they did with them: