Hand Holding

On Christmas Eve Eve (aka December 23), we were on our way to the home of our friends, where we spend Christmas every year, helping them celebrate their holiday as they often help us celebrate ours. I would make latkes and applesauce, and chicken soup with matzo balls; my friend would make eggplant parmesan with homemade marinara sauce, and pasta with a homemade meat sauce. We would feast. We did feast.

But before that, it was me and N and our dog Snug in the car, battling traffic while Baroy and Em were at a soccer meeting for her All-Stars team, readying themselves to join us later. I was transitioning from one freeway to another when...BAM. I was, it would later turn out, the third car in a three-car collision. I should say right out: Nobody was hurt, and my car sustained the least damage of them all. It was a blip, more than anything. Likely to be an expensive blip, but just a blip nonethess.

And yet, I still can't talk about the accident without shaking; just typing this is making my legs tremble, though I actually am not freaked out about it any more in my conscious mind. It's odd, and I don't know where it's coming from. But this blog post isn't about me. It's about N, who at first seemed more than fine about the whole thing--there was a POLICEMAN involved, after all, one who was on his way to dinner when he saw the three cars pulled over to the side of the road and came to our aid. There is nothing more exciting than a policeman in N's world.

And yet, I noticed--as we discussed it over dinner with our friends, and then with another friend when she arrived the following morning--that N stayed uncharacteristically quiet. When I asked him about it, he just hid under a couch pillow. He doesn't like to talk about hard stuff, my boy. And so I handed him this laptop, and asked him to write about it. The following, in all its misspelled and oddly worded glory, is his story.

(The only info you need is that the bumper was, originally, still attached, hanging by almost a thread, so the policeman pulled it off for us; and that it had a "Student of the Month" sticker on it, and the "Stu" is no longer there, so a friend pointed out to us that now it ironically reads "dent of the Month." Which, yes, it is. At least, it's the dent of OUR month.)

Oh, and the other thing you should know? The second-to-last line just about killed me.

My accident story

I felt scared and sad when the accident happened. My mom's car got hit and I never been in a car accident. Happy because I saw a police car yesterday and he pulled off my mom's bumper and now the sticker saids dent of the month. I thouht that I was going to get hrut and go to the Hositipl and have to do sugry on me with out my mom holding my hand. That is my story.