(with apologies to Arlo Guthrie)

Names have been changed due to the Statute of Limitations.

And the only reason I’m singing you this song now is’ cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a situation like that there’s only one thing you can do and that’s walk into the shrink wherever you are, just walk in say “Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice’s restaurant.”
—Arlo Guthrie, “Alice’s Restaurant,” 1966

8:00am, Wednesday morning, April 12, 2006

It was a usual, unexciting Wednesday morning. Woke up, had a cuppa and a cigarette, read a few pages from a biography of the Duke of Wellington I’m re-reading for the umpteenth time, showered, put on the cuffed pants, the white shirt, my favorite saffron tie, and headed off to work. Nothing special, nothing notable.

Until the bitch in the Ford Taurus, talking on her cellphone, looking west instead of east as she shot out into the traffic on Louetta, placed her immovable object directly in the path of my irresistible force—a 2002 Hyundai Excel, traveling at about 30 miles per hour.

(more…)