24 August 2001

The Coolest Thing I Ever Sawed

The coolest thing I have ever seen happened on Wednesday, July 11, 2001. I will never forget this as long as I live. It's why I hate/love my life sometimes. I have a hard time deciding which.

One of my closest friends called me that day to say she was leaving town to meet up with an old boyfriend and that she needed to go shopping--for kinky underwear. Being the incredible hentai that I claim myself to be, I gladly took up the job as aid to her task, which was not going to be easy. My friend is a plus size girl, and it's a trial trying to find her clothes, let alone naughty underwear.

Anyway, our first stop was at Fredericks of Hollywood. I saw a lot of shit that I wanted to get, but I'd rather buy doujinshi, so that stopped me right there. Anyway, we didn't find anything that fit. Bummer. So we went to Victoria's Secret. Another bummer. Eventually, we broke down and went to Wal-Mart, where she bought some nice, conservative, nightgowns. I was depressed. She wouldn't buy that catwoman outfit I wanted her to get.

She decided then that she needed some clothes, so we went to a local clothing store called Weiners. Weiners is like a busted down Sears. It's brand named clothes but at cheap ass prices (which is why they went out of business). Because they were going out of business, everything was super cheap, so she went through there and damn near bought everything since they had enough there in her size. Too bad it wasn't lingerie.

After five hours of shopping, from Fredericks to Weiners, she finally had everything she needed. We were standing at the cash register, where I was bitching about some leather pants that had a broken zipper. They offered it to me for a cheaper price, but I couldn't make them understand that I would only take the pants for free (yes, I was trying to bargain with the store). Do you know how much of a pain it is to fix leather?

That's when it happened. The first thing I heard was the screeching of tires. But you know how it is; you're so use to hearing that you don't pay much attention to it. No big deal.

The only way I can describe the sound of a large pane of glass breaking is to say it's the loudest thing you'll ever hear in your life. I thought I'd gone deaf. A woman, driving a tan Honda, drove through the front window of the store, and landed right in the middle of the boy's jeans department. A boy, around 16 was there at the time, and I turned just in time to see the car come through the window, and him take off at an inhuman speed to the back. (Heero wouldn't have been able to compete, okay?!) She went through a gated rack that was hanging by the window and landed on a rack of Levis, thereby stopping the car and breaking the rack, which trapped her inside the car.

Thinking back on it now, what I thought was interesting was the glass. The glass did not break like I thought it would. I thought, from watching TV or stunt shows, that glass broke into long, slender shards. This one broke into little balls. They looked more like golf-sized hail than glass shards. It was really weird.

The thing about those types of situations though is that your body's systems are at their peak, but mentally you break down. I'm not talking about crying or shit like that, just your logic gets kinda screwy. When I finally snapped out of my coma, I turned to the cashier, and being the smart gal that I am, I pointed to the car and told her, "that's a god damn car." See, logically, that's not suppose to happen. In our minds we know that cars don't park in department stores. It's a big contradiction, like saying "black is lighter than white." So, seeing a car, parked and smoking in a store, with broken glass rounded instead of in long, spiky shards was doing a number on me.

My friend is a LVN (also known as LPN in other states/countries), and I'm a certified nurse aide, so we got everyone where they needed to be and called the authorities needed to help this woman. But I refused to let her out of the car, and was ugly to anyone who tried to help her. For one, I didn't want her to move. I saw that she called her husband on her cell phone, but that's her bag, not mine. Secondly, I didn't know what her problem was. The bitch drove through a WINDOW to a BIG building. It's not like we jumped in front of her at the last minute, okay? Call me an asshole if you want. In the end, I'll be the one that's alive.

Plus my motives were very stupid. It's the movies' fault, I swear. I kept picturing her jumping out of the roof of her car with a Tommy gun, spraying down everyone in the store. It's ridiculous I know, but I couldn't help the image. It was pretty funny at the time. But seriously, I thought she was going to kill us or something. I couldn't see how she "accidentally" drove through the window at 35 miles an hour. (It was later confirmed that's how fast she was going). I didn't know she was going that fast, but she had to have been going pretty fast to clear the window, the support beam (she broke it in half on impact) and get a good 20 feet into the store.

That wasn't the strangest part. I've always thought of policemen as being professional and calm, poker--faced even in danger. These cops however, waited until she left for the hospital to laugh at her. I shit not, they LAUGHED at the lady. Because my friend and I and the cashier were the only ones that actually saw what happened, they wanted to question us, so we got to see them act like total fools. I'm still laughing at the jokes.

After that adventure, my friend and I went to a local bar to have a few drinks. I don't think you can dispute why.

Finally, around ten or so, I made it home and took my slightly buzzed ass to bed. I was still in shock from the event, not because of her but because of the boy. She could've killed him. I was highly upset. I've seen dead people, and I've seen people dying, but I've never seen anyone killed. At that thought, I cried, grateful that he was okay.

After that, I just sat back with a smoke and thought about it. Nobody was hurt. Even she wasn't hurt too badly, just a bump on the head. The cops laughed, we laughed, the boy laughed, and the other customers in the store laughed. No charges were going to be brought. It was going to be alright. I didn't have to worry.

But damn, that was the coolest fucking thing I ever sawed.

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