don't deconstruct

My father was in a car accident last week. He's okay, but his car had to be towed from the scene. My mother, upon hearing about said accident, shook her head and said,"Just last night I was telling him his tailgating is out of hand!"

While waiting for the highway patrol to show up, some guy on a motorcycle shows up and insists he's part of the three car accident (dad hit someone, that someone hit someone else). He waited for the CHP to show up before going into his sob story about how he slid on debris from the accident, which caused him to fall off his bike. The officer looks at him, looks at the apparent paint scratches on the bike, and waves the guy off, saying as a motorcyclist, he needs to be aware of potential debris on the road and handle his bike in a controlled manner to allow for this. The guy was furious, sputtering that my father's front license plate caused the accident, as it was ripped from the front of his car in the accident. At this point, my father gestures to his back seat and points out that he's already removed the license plate from the road, immediately after the accident (oddly enough, my father received a "fix it" ticket mere weeks before for failure to have a front license plate). This guy drives off, furious that he's not part of the accident, and the highway patrol officer takes the guy's license plate number and says he's going to include it in his accident report. (That really has nothing to do with anything, I just thought it was interesting.)

So anyway, the officer and my father get to talking, and my father asks him if he knows my cousin, also a CHP. Turns out, he and my cousin used to work together before she transferred further north when she and her girlfriend bought a house together (side bar: everyone in the family, except her parents, knows she's a lesbian. The CHP officer even asked how Patty's girlfriend was). So the officer offers to give my dad a ride to work, just a short jaunt from where the accident occurred. I cracked up at the mental image of Dad rolling into the parking lot in the back of a CHP car.

My father is heartbroken that his year-old car is now damaged goods. I'm sure the fact that he's driving around my work truck in all its nasty glory isn't doing much for his spirits, although if I have to hear him say one more time, "This truck has plenty of life in it!" (it has more than 210,000 miles on it). My mother says it's a good excuse for him to get the 7 series he cheaped out on and pass the 5 series on to me. I wouldn't object. I'm just glad he's safe, and maybe (maybe!) this'll learn him not to tailgate.

But who am I kidding.