What Is Wrong With People?

The other day I was backing out my car in the parking lot of my favorite bagel joint.

I must say that I backed out rather fast and obviously without looking too carefully, as I heard the sickening thud of hitting another car that was parked in the lot. Totally my fault.

I put the car in park and jumped out and a woman a little older than myself who owned the car, got out of her car. She was already in what I would call a "crazed state".

I inspected both cars for damage and found a paint scratch on the bumper on her car and no damage to mine. But if you would have heard this lady rant and rave, you would have thought I just killed her whole family! Here's a partial list of her one liners...the first one was repeated several times.

"What were you thinking? "

"I said, this guy's gonna hit my car! "

"This is our retirement car! "

"Why did you do it? "
"If you think I'm mad, wait till I call my husband and tell him" (a line that made me shudder)
"What are we gonna do?"
I told her that I was a moron (seriously)and made a mistake by misjudging the distance between our cars. Nothing I said could calm her down. At about this point a passerby said to us: "Is everything okay? Should I call the police?'  No, I thought, you should call a doctor and get her a Valium.

I told her we could exchange insurance info if she wanted, but I said there's almost no damage to your car. She then just asked me for my phone number and commented on how I could just give her a phony name and number. To that rant, I showed her my license and said if I'm lying to you, call then police on me and have me arrested.

She made me feel like a low life criminal who had just stolen money from a blind person.

After what seemed like an hour, but was probably 15 minutes, we both drove off. Her husband did call me and said he had tried to buff out the scratch but to no avail. He said he would get it repaired and send me the bill. I then said let's just report this to our insurance companies and we exchanged information. I told him I was sorry his wife had gotten so upset over the accident. He had no comment. Imagine what his days are like.