Accident Reports

Below are statements found on insurance claim forms where automobile drivers attempted to summarize the details of an accident in the fewest possible words.

·      Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don't have.

·      The other car collided with mine without giving me warning of its intention.

·      I thought my window was down, but I found it was up when I put my head through it.

·      I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way.

·      The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve several times before I hit him.

·      I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother in law and headed over the embankment.

·      In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.

·      I had been driving for 40 years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident.

·      I was on the way to the doctor with rear end trouble when my universal joint gave way causing me to have an accident and damage my big end.

·      As I approached the intersection a sign appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.

·      To avoid hitting the bumper of the car in front I stuck a pedestrian.

·      My car was legally parked as it backed into another vehicle.

·      An invisible car came out of nowhere, stuck my car and vanished.

·      I was sure the old fellow would never make it to the other side of the road when I struck him.

·      The pedestrian had no idea which direction to run. So I ran over him.

·      I saw a slow moving, sad faced old gentleman as he bounced off the roof of my car.

·      The indirect cause of the accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth.

·      I was thrown from my car as it left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows.

·      The telephone pole was approaching. I was attempting to swerve out the way when I struck the front end.

·      The accident was caused by me waving to the man I hit last week.

·      I knocked over a man, he admitted it was his fault as he'd been knocked over before.

In almost every one of these statements the person driving the car didn’t take the blame. Instead it is someone else’s fault. The person driving didn’t take responsibility for their actions. I realized that I hadn’t been taking responsibility for something.

I have read about how damaging plastic grocery bags are to the natural environment—they affect marine life if they get in the ocean, take a lot of energy to produce and take a long time to decompose in the landfill. It is a hassle to remember to gather the bags and return them to the grocery store to recycle.

Today’s gift was to gather up all of our grocery bags and put them in the recycle bin at the grocery store. I will remember the laugh that these accident reports gave me so that I will take responsibility in the future.

In Giving and Laughing,

Robin