I was supposed to test for my first degree black belt tonight. Was. Unfortunately, a driver who was supposed to be paying attention to the road, and presumably wasn’t, rear-ended me on Tuesday, leaving me in a rental car and with a mild concussion. Per doctor’s orders, I’ve missed a couple days of work and have to avoid extreme physical activities and contact sports for at least a week. A black belt test certainly qualifies as both.
But enough whining, there will be another opportunity in the spring to test for my black belt. I was lucky to walk away from the accident. And my Camry, Roheryn, has been all about luck, from the moment I won him at a Cubs game in 2012.
I entered a sweepstakes through the local Toyota dealership, winning a pair of tickets to a Cubs game and a spot as a finalist to win a Toyota Camry. On the day of the game, one of the finalists didn’t show up, bring my changes of winning to 1 in 5. We were each given a baseball with a number on it, and most of us had the player who was drawing the winning ball sign that one. Then he reached into a bag and picked one of the five balls in there; the number matched mine and happened to be his jersey number.
We took this car on our big road trip in 2013, visiting national monuments and parks on an eleven day drive. I drove this car to each of the out-of-state regional karate tournaments we’ve gone to, and loaded unseemly amounts of cargo from trips to Menard’s and other stores into the trunk and back seat.
Apparently the good luck was mine. Everything that’s supposed to happen in a car accident to protect the people inside did – the back window shattered appropriately, two airbags went off (did you know there’s a foot airbag?), and the back and front crumpled up rather than letting the other vehicles injure me.
I hope my next car is lucky too. Preferably without an accident.