About three weeks ago I got hit by a car. Like, while I was walking. As a pedestrian. Not in my car.
I had just come from Trinity Lutheran Church where I had been listening to my friends sing a Christmas Cantata. After I got done congratulating them, I got in my car and drove off to the Kwik Trip on Main Street here in West Bend. I turned right off Main Street onto Decorah and left onto 5th street and then left again into the parking lot. I parked in a spot adjacent to Decorah, got out of my car and started walking toward the door.
That’s when I saw the guy turn into the parking lot just the way I’d come in. Going kinda fast. I was in the middle of the parking lot, fully illuminated in his headlights. I did that thing you do: negotiating for a second whether to press on toward the door or wait for him to zip by…and then he just mowed me down. It never even occurred to me that he didn’t see me, such was my obviousness standing there right in front of his oncoming car. For a split second, right when I realized he wasn’t slowing down like he should, I thought that he was angry at me and was going to make a big show of screeching to a halt right in front of me and telling me off for being in his way. But no. Instead he just hit me. Didn’t even slow down.
His bumper took my legs out from under me right below the knee. I went up on the hood of his car. My shoulder hit the windshield. And then I rolled off onto the pavement on the driver’s side of his car. By this time he had stopped.
I was shouting. He got out of his car and was shouting too. I took a brief inventory of myself and realized that I could in fact get up off the ground, so I did. He was a young guy. A kid, really. I was cursing him out. He, meanwhile, was beside himself apologizing. Nearly in tears. I made as if to call 911, but then thought about the fact that I had no health insurance and decided not to. Instead I asked him for his name and phone number and took a picture of him and his license plate.
And then, because it was raining and because he had knocked me right out from under my baseball cap, I really wanted to go inside. So I put my hat back on and told him to move his car, as it was just sitting in the middle of the parking lot. And then I went inside and told the Kwik Trip employees that I’d just been hit by a car.
They were very nice to me. They sat me down and gave me a cup of coffee and called the police. At about this time I realized that the kid who hit me had driven away. Just left. The police arrived and wrote down my story and my information. They said that they would be paying the guy a visit and would give to me his information when they got it.
Weirdly, they said right then and there that they would not be issuing him a citation of any kind. Not inattentive driving, not hit-and-run, nothing. They were completely uninterested in taking any action whatsoever. Just think. I can’t drive from one end of this town to the other with a broken tail light without getting pulled over and cited, but if I mow someone down in a parking lot that’s pretty much ok by them. I really do not understand.
The police called me later that evening to tell me the guys full name and the name of his car insurance company. They reiterated that they were not interested in citing him for any wrongdoing. I continued to be amazed by this.
I didn’t seem to have any broken bones. I could walk without much pain. But the next morning I felt like…well, like I’d been hit by a car. Everything hurt. Especially my left elbow where I hit the pavement and my right shoulder which had hit the windshield. I took some Advil. The following day, Monday, it was worse. I didn’t go to work that day.
Meanwhile I called up his insurance company. It seems he had told them nothing about what had happened. So I did it for him. They told me that they would likely pay for any medical bills I incurred regarding the incident, so on Wednesday of that week I went in to get some x-rays. According to the doctors, I was fine except for a little arthritis in my shoulder.
I spoke again to the insurance company and they agreed to pay me for my lost wages and cover 100% of my clinic visit. They also offered me $500 for “pain and suffering.”
I also consulted an attorney. He said that I shouldn’t take the money until I was sure I wasn’t going to incur any further medical costs. So I wanted another week to see how I felt. I still have pain in my shoulder when I raise my arm just so. Maybe it will go away. Maybe it won’t. But let’s face it, I don’t pitch for a major league baseball team. No one is going to do surgery because my shoulder hurts when I go like this. I’m a desk jockey. And at 50 years old, everything hurts a little anyway.
So I took the money. In the end, after my expenses, I walked away with about $500. Essentially it paid for my Christmas gift shopping. And that’s the end of it.