It was an accident.

I already had a headache. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't nothing. It was, after all, a headache. It hurt. In my head.

So I wasn't committed to the accident when it happened. I was puttering along at a red light, if I was moving at all it was just the slow shuffle of cars that aren't at the front of the line, as they edge up to the next car. Then BAM! my car jumped forward about a foot, maybe less. It was such a low impact that I almost didn't know what happened. I thought maybe my brakes had temporarily failed and I had simply moved forward. But that would not have explained the jerkiness of it, or the noise. Then I looked in the rearview and sure enough there was a car right on my bumper. Well, technically they were about a foot behind me, but close enough for me to realize what had happened.

My first emotion at this point was, "Awe shit." I could tell the other driver felt the same. In my mirror I could see his shoulders drop in resignation as his brain told him that holding his breath any longer would not erase the reality that he had in fact hit me. I could also tell that he was young and had two others in his car. One was in the front passenger seat and the other was in the floorboard of the front of the car with her feet still hovering in the air around the middle of the back.

My head pounded harder. I totally wanted to pretend this had not happened and just keep on driving. Is it a hit and run if you're the one who is hit? Probably. I decided to I should pull over just to be safe.

When I got out of the car the first thing I did, like a good person, was ask if everyone in their car was ok. They were. Then I inspected the damage. At first I didn't see any. "Awe shit again," I thought. It would be one thing if the back end was all mangled. Then I would be totally justified in calling. But with no clearly visible damage it made calling the police that much harder. There were a couple of scratches, but that was all. And, as I messed with the Continental Kit, which had come loose, a long piece of plastic came out. The purpose of this strip of plastic is still unknown to me, as I could not find a place where it went, and losing it did not seem to affect the functionality of the Continental Kit. For those of you not in the know, the Continental Kit is the fake tire on the back of some older model luxury cars. Basically it is a large piece of ornamental garbage that extends the length of an already ludicrously long car. I was hoping that the one on my car would be irreperably damaged. But after fiddling with it for a second it locked back into place and was good as new.

Two scratches. Two scratches was all I had to show for calling the cops. Then the kid got out of the car. To say he looked odd would be an understatement. He had this amazing hair. He must have used half a bottle of product to get it to stay how he had it. It was a feat of cosmetic engineering. His hair stuck out about 7 inches from his head, all the way around. He looked like he had a hair halo. But it did not stick out everywhere. Just in a ring, like Saturn, around his head. Imagine an old timey straw hat, like Huckleberry Finn might have worn, only push it far back on his head so that from a profile view the front rim is pointing at a 45 degree angle from the ground, and the rest of the rim went around his head on that same plane. That was how this driver looked. It was totally awesome. And he wore Burkinstocks with no sock, which means he understood how Burkinstocks are not to be worn (with socks).

His friends were a girl and a guy. The guy looked like your typical skater. He had his bangs hanging down the side of his face to his chin and he wore all black with chains here and there. The girl looked like a typical girl in sweats. She was, however, clearly in love with the guy in black as she only stopped sucking on his face when her cell phone rang, which was about every three minutes.

Hair-halo came up to me after calling someone on his phone, and said, "It looks like I have more damage than you."

Of course he did. He was driving a tiny, green Hundai. I was driving a gigantic, burgundy 1988 Cadillac. His car was made for economy. My car was built to defy economy. My car was built to show the Soviets how asinine toilet-paper lines are. In America we have as much toilet paper as we want. And we get it by driving to the store in wheeled battleships that get 13 miles to the gallon. And even if I hadn't been driving a Cadillac, red always beats green. That's a fact of science.

Anway, he said what he said, and I told him I had called the police. He nodded as though he understood. "If it were my car," I said, "I wouldn't care. The damage is almost unnoticable. But it is my grandmother's car." "Yeah," he said.

As we sat there waiting for the cops I looked for my insurance. I know that grandma had put me on her insurance, but I couldn't for the life of me find a current copy. I searched through every piece of paper in the car, but there was nothing current. GREAT! I got hit from behind, doing everything right, and I'm going to get a ticket for not having insurance. That made my head start pounding again; only much, much harder. And as the sun started to go down, it got colder. That also made my head pound.

Sigh.

Finally the cop got there and took our driver's licenses and plate numbers. He quickly interrogated us regarding the accident, and we both agreed on how it happened. Then Hair-halo had to fill out a form because he was only 17. Then he sat in his car for 15 minutes while I wondered if I was going to get a ticket and Hair-halo looked like he was wondering the same thing. We didn't. The cop just gave us information cards to fill out and exchange, then he told us we could go.

There really isn't a good ending to this story. I mean, it isn't a bad ending; it isn't an unhappy ending. It's just an ending. I went my way and they went theirs. But since then I keep thinking, "God. I used to be 17."