Blog's from the Bush

It was parked, I was backing out of a park and I reversed into it. The bloody kerb side handle on my tailgate collected it's spoiler. To make matters worse it belongs to a "P" plater and its all nice and shiny like first cars are when you're proud of them.

Moments before I hit this nice red Ford the front quarter panel of my ute was hit. Not by a car, but rather by the hand of some agro old guy who when I turned back to see what had caused the noise, kindly gave me "the bird" or the "one finger salute". This is when I should have immediately hit the break but concentration broken I didn't and I hit the red ford.

When I felt the impact I stopped the car, jumped out and there it was handle scratch along the spoiler - in fact the handle was still in contact with the spoiler. So, I swung the handle down so it wasn't in contact with the spoiler, as I was doing this a lady with a primary school age child passed me saying "Don't worry it's not my car" which I didn't really think about then. I drove back into my park and figured out what to do next. First I went to the Admin office, told them what had happened and gave them the license number of the car thinking they could page the person in the mall but apparently they couldn't do that. So, then I got some paper and wrote a note to the driver/owner of the car and put this under the windscreen wiper. Thinking what to do next I took a photo so I had a record of the damage.

I now had two choices, go home and wait for a phone call or wait indefinitely until the owner came back to their car. I decided on the third option, ie. wait 15 minutes in the hope that they would turn up and if they didn't then go home.

After about 10 minutes he turned up and given the rest of the people that had walked past in that time it was obviously his car - young fellow out with a lady friend. Poor bugger had only got the car on the Saturday and was understandably upset about the scratch. Any way I reiterated what was on the note and got the note off the car and gave it to him. I told him to get a couple of quotes and to give me a call so I could get it all sorted for him.

All straight forward, I mean he was covered from a getting it fixed point of view and I was in a good karma position, so no sweat (apart from feeling bloody stupid and angry with myself). Don't get me wrong I'm totally in the wrong, that's why I have insurance - I know I'm not perfect and will on occasion stuff up. I also have insurance because everyone else is like me...

The other thing worth mentioning is that I know how I felt returning to my first car and finding a scratch for some idiot in a carpark who didn't bother to leave a note. Looking at this car I knew given the P plate and the condition of it he would be proud of his car and pissed to find it scratched and no one around. Thats why it was so easy to spot him walking back to his car...

So where's the hardwiring? Where's the "Mature Society"?
The hardwiring is this - my mind keeps returning to the event and I keep running down the same paths. In fact so far this blog entry is just a verbalised version of the loop current playing in the main cinema of my mind. I empirically understand that I've done the right thing by this kid and by myself ie. he's covered and I feel better about it than I would have if I'd just done the bolt. So, why is the loop there drowning out "Everybody Loves Raymond"? Lets not get distracted by the fact that I watch Raymond.

The only thing I can put it down to is some aspect of the same system that dumps adrenaline and other drugs into your brain when events like this happen. Its almost like there's some timer in the brain that's firing off and refreshing the incident in my mind. The only thing I can tell is that it has by now, some 2.5 hours later, faded somewhat in intensity.

Is this some left over self preservation mechanism that refreshing the event to keep Neanderthal me alive? Sort of like an "Oo Oooo look for the Sabertooth Tiger again" message to keep me on my toes. Whatever it is, it seems to be related to what we call stress because I'm wound up tighter that a two-bob watch. Given the damaging effects of stress on the body I'm not to happy about it.

So is this hardwiring from some prehistoric part of my brain or is the new brain a little OC? I hope it's the former - anyone care to enlighten me?

Further from Mature Society than ever...
When I was working at the ASX back in the late 80's I had parked my car a couple of blocks away on a street in Sydney. About an hour later I came back to my car to find all of the drivers side pushed in and badly scratched. At first I was pissed off and then I got confused because the windscreen of my car was covered in notes, business cards and just about anything else people could write on. It seems something like 30 people saw the accident, got the details of the taxi that hit me and wrote them down and left a name and number I could contact them at if I needed a witness. Now things like that really bolster my faith in humanity.

Today, I got the distinct impression I was an oddball for hanging around and trying to do the right thing by owner of red car. Certainly, the people in the mall administration office were surprised that I came in and reported it. Apparently its the people that have been hit that they normally hear from.

The mother with the child that went past practically exonerated me, and encouraged me to leave without worrying about it. Which makes you wonder what message her child got from that...

Have you ever done something as simple as leaving a note for some poor unfortunate like myself in the '80's or the kid that owned the red car today? I hope I'm wrong and the greater percentage does do things like that but I fear that may not be the case...

In a mature society where everyone takes responsibility for their own actions what I did would be the norm. Think about it this way - by doing the right thing the owner of this car at least drove out of the car park knowing that it will get fixed. I'm not saying he would be happy but at least he wouldn't be seriously pissed off at some nameless faceless gutless wonder that didn't own up to the damage to his car. My way he drives off and hopefully is less angry and less pre-occupied with the scratch that he would otherwise be - and hopefully this means he's less likely to have an accident.

Taking responsibility is like paying it forward, albeit in an indirect fashion.