Man vs. Car

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine, who had read my recent posts on falling down, was hopeful to see an entry describing my somewhat recent "run-in" with a car on the University of Iowa/Downtown area. Well, Ben, here ya go!

In the middle of October of this year, Mary-Jane and I had planned to travel down to Missouri to drop me off to visit my folks and participate in a high school sports celebration, and for her to travel down to Oklahoma to see her brother for his birthday. On the day of our departure, I decided to go ahead and work for half of the day at my research lab at the university, due to the fact that I was to meet a prospective chemistry graduate student at a university luncheon. This is all just nice set up for what is about to happen.

On the return trip from the luncheon that was held downtown in the Sheraton Hotel, I was making my way across downtown back toward campus. I came upon a moderately busy intersection, that had a constant flow of traffic and pedestrians, especially in the early afternoon. I was at the southeast corner of the intersection, wanting to head west (i.e., crossing the north/south traffic). I came to the corner, and pressed the button instructing the lights that I wanted to cross. As the N/S traffic's light turned to yellow, three cars heading north slowed to a stop, and the light turned red. At this point, my little white man walking sign replaced the red hand, and I began to walk across the street. At the same time, six or seven folks on the southwest corner started walking toward me. The young man that was facing north and in the far right lane wanted to turn right (east). He studiously looked to his left, saw the six or seven folks heading his way, and slowly crawled up the line, toward me. I thought nothing of it, as people commonly did this, and I assumed he would turn as soon as I passed his bumper. All of a sudden, he accelerated fully, rammed through my legs, and I, with full, unopened can of coke in my hand, slammed down on his hood as my legs were taken out from under me! As hard as I hit, I'm certain I left two dents in his hood - one from the coke can, and one from my wedding ring. He slammed on the brakes and I slid off the car, pushing myself up to check my lower appendages. After realizing they were fine, I wanted to just walk off as if nothing happened to avoid embarassment, but I thought, "no, no...I just GOT HIT BY A CAR, and it wasn't my fault...he should be embarassed." So I soaked in the 30+ onlookers stares with pride due to my lack of injuries. I wasn't at all superman since the car really wasn't going more than 7 miles an hour tops, but it still felt pretty invigorating. All the while, the young man is rolling down the window and opening his door at the same time just to say, "dude, are you alright, man?" I told him I was, and after he stared at me awhile, not believing I withstood the hit from the noise he heard of me crashing down into his dodge stratus hood, he finally took me for my word, and I told him to just look both ways before he crossed an intersection, similarly to how a mother would to a half-wit child.

Anywho, I continued my walk back to my building, packed up my things and went home to get my dog and pick up my wife on our way to Missouri. Needless to say, I invoked a lot of crazy gasps and scares as I told people that I was hit by a car today. Now you can brag to your friends that you know someone that has survived being hit by a car while walking through downtown Iowa City, and with no bumps, bruises, or hospitalization, you may need to question his hidden enhanced healing abilities...