Brad Brown

My weekend trip to Mom’s began as it usually did. I woke up an hour late and ended up getting out the door by 10:00 am. It was raining fairly heavily that day. The rain was coming down in sheets and producing a nice rhythm as it pelted Lil’ Pepe. I turned off of Riverside onto 285, the massive ring of a highway that acts as the perimeter of Metro Atlanta. The traffic was rather light, so I moved over to the leftmost lane to avoid a line of dump trucks in the slow lane. As I accelerated, I pressed my arms against the steering wheel and leaned hard back in the seat; I liked to pretend that the G-forces were pushing against me as my truck rocketed into inner space.
 
Just as I was approaching the Home Depot headquarters, an old, white Ford F-150 passed me quickly on the right, then immediately swerved in front of me about fifteen feet away. When you’re driving fifty-five on a highway on a rainy day and someone does that, the resulting water kicked up is blinding. I noticed the truck weaving ever so slightly from left to right, so I moved over to the left-most lane and punched the accelerator to get ahead, leaving the other guy behind. I pulled back into the middle lane and continued on. About thirty seconds later, I heard the roar of an engine and looked back to see the white truck coming up fast behind me. He moved into the right lane and passed me. He then pulled back into my lane. Unfortunately, he pulled directly into me (Figure One).
 
[The next paragraphs really need background music. I’m going to recommend listening to “Into The Arena” By Michael Schenker while you continue reading].

An interesting truck ballet started when the left tail-end of the other truck struck my right-front bumper. Both trucks started to hydroplane due to the water on the asphalt, and both started rotating counter-clockwise, the other truck just a bit faster than mine. After the initial bump, we lost physical contact with each other for a few seconds. At the point my truck started moving passenger-side first down the highway (Figure Two), I thought to myself “Oh, {expletive}, this is going to be {expletive}ing bad!” They say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die; in my case, I had an immediate visual of me in the hospital connected to all kinds of lifesaving equipment. That flash was interrupted by what I saw during my continued rotation (now, the truck was moving backwards down the road). I noticed that there were five lanes of traffic headed in my direction, and that there was a tractor-trailer in mine (Figure Three). My truck continued to rotate counterclockwise, now heading towards the concrete barrier separating the oncoming lanes of traffic (the 10 o’clock position, for those of you keeping up on your clocks).
 
Luckily for me, by the time my truck started moving towards the concrete barrier, the other truck had already started smashing into it passenger side first (Figure Four). I promptly rammed his passenger door with my front bumper, make the nicest, albeit temporary “T”. As I struck him, I noticed four black heads of hair in the cab, waiting for the whiplash. I smashed into him, then bounced back rotating towards the outer lanes of traffic, and came to a stop at about the 2:00 position. The other truck was stopped, lodged firmly against the concrete barrier, headed in the wrong direction (Figure Five). Surprisingly, my engine was still running, so I drove Lil’ Pepe towards the breakdown lane, with a loud “scrape scrape” coming from my front wheel wells. All the oncoming traffic was able to stop; the semi was about fifty feet away from my final resting place. I sat in my truck on the side of the road, stunned, waiting for the proper authorities to arrive.
 
In the two minutes before the cops arrived, three men exited the other truck, ran towards the edge of the road, and kept running right into the woods - gone! These days, I ask myself why I didn’t get out of my truck and tackle the bastards (I had about an extra foot and an additional 100lbs on my side); however, after a car wreck, one never thinks too clearly. I was just happy to be alive.
 
The driver exited just as the state troopers arrived; I suspect had they arrived a few minutes later, he would have disappeared into the woods as well. He was moving slowly, so the officer escorted him to the side of the road. He was a short Mexican man, who surprisingly, spoke no English. Soon, an interpreter arrived and started taking his story. By this time, my shock had disappeared and was replaced with anger. I wanted to walk over to the guy and unleash some lethal QiGong on him. When the cop finally came over to interview me, he gave me the bad news. “Since there are no witnesses, it’s your word against his” he said. Even though there were probably twenty drivers behind us at the time of the accident, none of them bothered to stop.
 
“Is he actually a citizen? Shouldn’t he be arrested?” I axed. “That’s not my jurisdiction,” he replied. At that point, I dropped the twenty questions I had remaining and just described my side of the story. He gave me a copy of the accident report, and about that time, my good friends from AAA arrived to tow Lil’ Pepe in for reconstructive surgery.
 
[Mental note: The conversation with the tow truck driver would make a fascinating addition to my upcoming movie of the week]
 
The next few weeks were spent giving phone interviews to an Allstate agent to prove I wasn’t the culprit. As it turns out, my keen sense of storytelling came in handy; my account of the accident was quite thorough, and eventually Allstate “ruled” in my favor. Lil’ Pepe eventually recovered. The body shop did leave a few parts dangling, but I was able to mount them myself with zip ties. I have no idea what became of the illegal alien who caused the accident, why he hit me (stupidity, vengeance, or alcohol), or what happened to his three friends. They’re probably standing in the parking lot of the Value Village Thrift Store in Little Mexico right now, waiting to be picked up for day labor [my final stereotype for this article - I promise].
 
Conclusion?
There really is no conclusion to this story. The major irritation for me was that someone not contributing to our society attempted to kill me, and then ran; it didn’t really matter to me whether they were American citizens or not. The one change I made as a result of this incident was my driving style. Today, when I get on a major highway, I stay in the rightmost lane and drive more conservatively. I’m not saying this would have prevented this particular accident, but my days of hanging in the fast lane have just caused too much stress with minimal savings in time. BradBrown.com is now officially a little old lady.
 
Xenophobically yours,
Brad Brown
 
Prologue
In my book, due out in 2010, you’ll find an expanded version of this story. In that version, there is a fictional ending, where I use my knowledge of programming, raconteuring, and survival to help the I.N.S. track down the driver and three passengers of that truck. They are then deported, and fireworks are lit in celebration. I thought I’d tell you about this deviation, so you’ll have something for trivia night in 2011.
 
FAQ

1. Do you realize there’s no such word as “raconteuring?”
    
   I sometimes take artistic liberties. I’m like the Jackson Pollock of the blogging world (but without the alcoholism or talent). Mark my word - in ten years, “raconteuring” will be in the dictionary.

 

2. How do you know they were Mexican? They could have been Spanish or Canadian.
    
   I took two years of high school Spanish with Esmania DeSouza, a fine Mexican woman. I spent enough time with her and her family to know the difference in dialect between Spain and Mexico. I’ve also spent enough time listening to Triumph, Coney Hatch, Kim Mitchell, and Rush to know they weren’t Canadian.

 

3. In your diagrams (Figures One through Five), your handwriting is bad, but your rectangles are pretty good. Are you sure you’re not really a five-year old girl learning to write for the first time?
    
   Yes, I’m quite sure that I’m a thirty-eight year old male with a history of terrible handwriting. The only time I handwrite anything these days is to sign for credit card purchases, so my handwriting has become quite bad. It was actually better when I was in the third grade. The rectangles are courtesy of a drafting template from my days in college.

 

4. You refer to your truck as “Lil’ Pepe.” Pepe is a common Mexican name. Isn’t it ironic that Pepe was hit by Mexicans?
    
   Irony has confused me ever since Alanis Morrisette muddied the definition. I’ll look into it.

 

5. Why would you name your truck Lil’ Pepe?

    
   I didn’t. Bob Dentler, the crotchety DBA who worked with me at Syncor, nicknamed it. I thought it was catchy, so it stuck.

 

6. How do you know they were illegal?
    
   I would assume that someone with an American license plate and a Georgia driver’s license would be able to speak English; he couldn’t. I would also assume that unless they were criminals, the other three guys would have stuck around to support their buddy. Given these two things, I’m pretty sure they weren’t citizens. It doesn’t really matter, but it does add a nice sinister element to the story. If you’re offended, you can pretend they were Canadian.

 

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