my Friday night, and Saturday...

     That's where the golf ball hit the car. I was driving, about 45 mph, past the driving range. It was maybe 8:30 on Friday evening. My first thought: "That was very close!" Then I looked in the rear-view mirror, and saw that my back window was white. My first word: "Fuck!" Then I giggled. I was terrified, stupid.
     My back window was hit, by a golf ball, while I drove past the driving range. What the hell?!
     It apparently glanced off where it hit the first time, because there was a second hole.
     I realized that there were two holes because every tiny bump that I hit in the road caused little pieces of glass to fall into the ledge of my back seat. This all happened in seconds, though. My immediate reaction was to speed up. I turned into the next driveway that I could find, turned around (toward home), and got the hell out of there. There was no way I was letting it happen again. As I drove past the driving range itself, I saw that there were only a handful of people there--maybe 3 or 4?--and they were all in the center slots. They were either really bad, really drunk, or aiming for the road.
     I drove to the police station, which is a block past my house. I've never been there before, certainly not just before 9 PM. I was unsure of the procedure. Lucky for me, it was shift change and an officer was arriving as I walked toward the door with a look of obvious confusion on my face. He asked if he could help me and I explained briefly what had happened. "Whoa, shit, that's awful. Are you all right?" That shook me up for a minute; I hadn't even thought about the possibility that I might have been injured, or that I might have hurt someone else because of what had happened (like that I might've become distracted and hit someone). I took a second to clear my head and then said, "No, I'm fine, but my back window is gone." He then explained how to contact the dispatcher through the phone that was next to the door, and that he would have called through his radio but that there was "a lot going on right now" (i.e. lots of radio traffic) and that it would actually be faster for me to call than for him to do it. I thanked him--realizing that if he hadn't been there I'd have been lost--and set to it.
     The dispatcher said that an officer would meet me at my car. She seemed to think it would be easy to find in the parking lot. Yup, that would be my car, the one with the holes in the back window.
    Needless to say, my cop (female) found me with no difficulties. She couldn't file a "report" because that requires an "accident" which necessitates another named participant. Instead, she noted the "incident"--the best that I could ask, given the circumstances--and advised me as to my options for further actions.
     At the same time, my car became the focus of attention for other emergency workers. They were amazed and impressed at my driving; F.B. cop (the one who'd come upon me when I first arrived and helped me sort out contacting dispatch) told me that he "would've needed to change [his] pants" if he'd gone through what I did, and he'd certainly have driven more erratically and knocked all the glass out before he got to the station. Hey, I'll take my compliments where I can get them. By that point, I was pretty damned shaky.
     So. I can pick up a copy of the incident, er, not 'report' but...'file'? "in the middle of the week". And the police couldn't (i.e. wouldn't) call the driving range, because the issue was not criminal but rather civil (basically, my word against his). But my cop encouraged me to call the range and work it out, and to call my insurance agent as well, of course.
     I drove home. One block. I was trembling and the back window was making this freezing-rain-falling-on-snow sound ("tink tink tink tink"), though it wasn't actually falling, it was just the sound it made while internally breaking. It was the sound of anticipation, I think. [shudder] I parked as close to the building as I could get, and removed my I-Pass and the face plate from my CD player. (Like it's going to fucking matter? Like somebody's going to crawl through the glass to steal my CD player?! And my I-Pass, with maybe $35 on it?!) I came upstairs and sat down for the first time since It had all happened. Thought fleetingly of going into the bedroom and hiding under the covers, but instead I pulled out the phone book and found the number for the driving range.

Fuckhead: "Family Sports Center"A: "Hi. I was just driving by there, east on Route 64, and my car was hit by a golf ball."
Fuckhead: "Are you all right?"A: "Yes, I am, thank you. My rear window was shattered, though."
Fuckhead: "Oh, wow. OK. You said it just happened?"A: "Yes. About 30 minutes ago."
Fuckhead: [immediate demeanor change, from concerned and solicitous to complete raging asshole] "30 minutes ago?"
A: "Yes. I just left the police station, from filing a report."
Fuckhead: "You went to the police station?"
A: [beginning to think that he's even more of an idiot than anticipated, although any adult working for a driving range at 9:00 on a Friday night isn't likely to be my intellectual match...] "Yes. I went to the police station. To file a report."
Fuckhead: "Why didn't you stop here? You should've stopped here."A: "I'd just been hit with a golf ball! It's never happened to me before, so I didn't know there was a procedure. And I didn't want to be hit again. I got out of there!"
Fuckhead: "So you went to the police station, instead of coming here. You probably just broke your window yourself, and now you want somebody else to pay for it."
A: "Are you trying to imply that I'm lying?"
Fuckhead: "Yes."
A: "Why would I do that?! I was just driving on a public road past the driving range, I get hit by a golf ball, and that's not right."
Fuckhead: "Do you still have the ball?"A: "No, it bounced off."
Fuckhead: "Yeah, right. Here's what you do: call your insurance."
A: "Obviously. And my insurance agent will call you, since this was your fault."
Fuckhead: "Well, you do what you think you have to do."
A [who does he think he is, Brando?!] "Yes, right, thank you. Enjoy your evening."
Asshole. Fuckhead.

    He accused me of breaking my own window, and trying to get him to pay for it. Because I'm histrionic? Or just whacked?
     He chose the wrong person to disbelieve. Clearly.
     I made arrangements to keep the car in a friend's garage overnight. My best friend came over (as previously planned) and followed me to D's to deal with the car. Before we left, I took the pictures of the damage for the insurance. The initial impact of the ball is pretty clear from the photos.
    It's a good thing I took those photos. As I drove out of my parking lot, I took the exit a little too fast for the glass to handle and about 3/4 of the remaining glass went "WHOOMP" onto the ledge and back seat. Scared me out of my skin. I jumped a mile. All that remained was the area around the "E", below.
    After parking the car in the garage (I didn't bother locking it this time) BF & I spend a half-hour or so talking with D & D, pretty much just assuring them that I was still living and not suffering any adverse effects from the experience. Well, I was, but they weren't excessive. BF and I then went to The Junction (mozzarella sticks. Nothing else. Rare for me, but I was feeling profusely sorry for myself and nothing else would do.), and after that watched something on TV until it was time to call it a night.
     I got up yesterday morning fairly late. I put off calling my insurance agent much longer than I should have, but it was just so depressing. When I finally did call him, it turned out to be less wretched than anticipated. He was very sympathetic, very supportive, and extremely helpful. The best news I've had in ages: I have zero deductible on auto glass. Woohoo! It pays to be a bonehead about insurance, because I just kept the full load of whatever was on there when I had the bank loan, even after I'd paid it off. That's a relief.
     We tried to set up replacement for the window yesterday, but because it is a complicated window (not only an odd shape but it also involves the embedded radio antenna and defroster), it requires genuine Honda parts--and not just glass but also the molding around. Pain in the ass. The short version is that I had to take the world's fastest shower and drive as fast as possible to get to The Large City to the Northwest by noon. That way, the auto-glass manager of the shop that I'm working with could see it before he left for the day. (There was some question about whether it was solar or non-solar glass.) Well, I didn't make it by noon. Driving without a back window makes for strange handling, and the faster I drove, the faster I was pelted with tiny shards of glass. Constantly. For 42.76 miles, give or take, with the capricious whims of wind and chance, glass showered my head, neck, shoulders, arms, legs, and feet. It was everywhere. On the dashboard. Horrendous. I'd brought a can of Coke, but didn't dare open it; I'm not that brave!
    I arrived at 12:20 or so. The auto-glass manager had waited for me, which I thought was really quite nice, above and beyond what's required. It turns out that my car does not have solar glass (whatever that means). The part has been ordered and may arrive during the day on Monday but probably that evening. I will pick up the car on Wednesday morning unless something goes wrong.
    D picked me up a bit later. I'd brought a book because I knew she wouldn't be right behind me--I sat in the sun and read a full chapter of Three Junes before she got there.
     We went to Ulta (I just needed to pick up one thing...and left with a bag full of miscellaneous stuff & nonsense), Hobby Lobby (she bought an end table sort of thing), out for lunch at Perkins (I ate a ridiculous quantity of blueberry pancakes), and then to the mall for Eddie Bauer. I got this in Marine:
and this in Brook [which isn't even available on the website anymore!] and in White:
I wanted to get a standard camisole in 'Brook' but they were out of stock:
I think it may have been 'retail therapy', combined with a legitimate need for some warm-weather clothes.
     We came home, I had a long nap, and started really absorbing this.
     I could've been badly hurt. Or killed. I could've hurt somebody else. If that ball had flown into my side window (which was open), I don't know what would have happened, beyond almost certain injury. If it had hit my windshield, I probably would have crashed the car. If it had hit someone else, they might have hit me.
     They might've killed me.
     As F.B. cop said, "Thank God it didn't happen to somebody who didn't know what they were doing, who wasn't in control of their car." As BF said, "Thank God it didn't happen to somebody with a baby in the back seat."

I guess I'm lucky?