We were traveling on the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut. I was in my Jeep, going about 65 miles an hour in the right lane and you were in the left lane in your…well, I don’t what you were in because I never saw you. I did FEEL you, though, as you side-swiped my Jeep, forcing me to jerk right and collide into a guardrail, blowing out a tire, and ripping off a good portion of the side of my Jeep. And then you kept driving.
I was so rattled I didn’t see who you were, what you were driving or exactly what happened. I was just happy to be breathing and still conscious, quite honestly. It happened so quick I didn’t have time to think about you or what kind of person would keep driving. But now I’ve had time to think about it:
You were either drunk, texting and distracted, without insurance, too young to tell mom and dad what you did, too old and afraid to lose your license and absolutely too stupid to realize you could have killed someone.
I’m sad that we’ve created a culture of cowards. I’m sad that you didn’t know if I was a pregnant mother, an elderly man carrying his grandchildren, a young college graduate with his whole life in front of him – you kept driving with no regard to whose life you’d interrupted, or, how that could have reverberated across family and friends of someone you never cared to know.
I’ll never know who you are, but I know I’ll experience someone like you, and when I do I hope to look you in the eye and say, “Own your shit; live in your skin; utter the great equalizer: ‘I’m sorry,’ so we can both breath past the fact that anything can happen in the blink of an eye.
Having said all that: you’re an asshole for not stopping, and I’d like to pop you one right in the face.
Love, Gary