The other day I got into a car accident for the first time in about 20 years. I had stopped at a yellow light like a fool and several seconds later a loud bang sends my body lurching forward as if my ethereal self has been forcefully ejected from my corporeal self. Fortunately it has not. Upon further inspection everything seems fine. I glance in the rearview mirror to see the woman in the green Kia Soul behind me looking dazed.

What is it we're supposed to do in these situations? I'd very much like to drive off and continue about my business but I'm pretty sure that's illegal. I turn off to a less busy side street and she follows. I pull over in the only spot available, directly in the right turning lane. It seems like as good a place as any for whatever it is we're supposed to do now.

I get out of the car and she apologizes and asks if I'm ok. I say I'm fine, are you ok? She's fine too. This is off to a fine amicably awkward start. I check the back of my car and it looks ok except for the imprint of her license plate bolts in my rear bumper. Oh it doesn't look bad at all, I reassure her, feeling absurdly embarrassed about causing a hassle by having my car smashed. Her license plate is caved in but otherwise her car looks fine too. Ok, I say, so I guess we should exchange insurance information?

Yes that's the thing to do, I'm almost certain of it. Wait, are we supposed to call the police? No, any scenario I can imagine that would improve this situation emphatically does not include a cop showing up. She efficiently texts me her policy information while I fumble around with the GEICO app like an octogenarian just trying to get this dang thing to CALL someone. I mean I know it's a lot to ask for a phone to call someone, but maybe I'm just old fashioned that way. Nobody calls anymore anyway. Nowadays it's just tap tap tap on that smart doohickey—how can you even read anything on that tiny screen? Your fingers are liable to rot off from all that tapping. I tell you the art of conversation is dead and buried and rolling in its grave...

Finally I navigate the Byzantine labyrinth of texting her my insurance card and I say take care like we're old friends and then we get into our respective cars and go our separate ways. Alone again, I try to make sense of things. We exchanged insurance information like it was some solemn rite. What either of us would do with said information was unclear, but we exchanged it and that's what matters. Yes, I congratulate myself, you handled that masterfully. Like a regular middle-aged adult human who knows how to do things.

Back on the road, the doubts begin to creep in. Do I call my insurance now so there's a record of the event? Or is that enough for them to jack up my rate? Maybe I should wait until I'm sure something is wrong, but how am I supposed to know? Does the suspension feel looser than it did before? Was it all that tight to begin with? How in the hell is a layperson supposed to judge something as ephemeral as suspension tightness? Is that even a real thing or did I just make it up in my head?

As I cross the Fremont Bridge I let go of the steering wheel as a test. The car starts veering to the right, towards the edge of the bridge. I'm tempted to let it—it seems like the simplest option—but no, I don't have the stomach for that, and anyways I'm not the problem here. It's the system that has failed me by tricking me into thinking I need a dangerous contraption as unknowable as the human heart—and twice as deadly!—then getting me to buy it at a high enough price that I'm willing to spend extra money for the privelege of not havimg to worry about it getting damaged. This was supposed to simplify things, but nothing is simple. I am the warm pink fleshy nucleus of a cold universe bristling with swirling knives. I guess that's its own kind of simplicity.

I straighten out and merge onto Highway 26, aiming my car due west and not stopping until I drive the cursed object into the sea. At last, soaking wet, covered with kelp and various crustaceans, watching the sun set from the terminus of the Lewis and Clark Trail, my life is once again small and blessedly uncomplicated, and my mind is finally calm. My stomach is complaining though. I pull a couple of soggy bills from my sock and head over to get a Pronto Pup. That at least is something I can understand.