Crash

And I really liked that car, too. They're not that easy to find nowadays, you know? But that morning was the same as every other morning. I had the rhythm down to an art form, except for one tiny little wrinkle. I didn't sleep well that night for some reason, and I had an appointment to reach. I'm not some loser cable repairman, an incompetent buffoon cartwheeling about in a van at ten miles an hour. When I say I'll be there at nine in the morning, by god I will be there at nine in the morning. Except that one morning, it was already eight thirty and I was already thirty one. I thought to myself, one more just this morning won't kill me. Maybe it'll wake me up.

I don't know what I was thinking. It sure didn't wake me up. It didn't kill me, sure, but it killed the car and a perfectly good tree. The judge yelled that it could've killed any number of other people, like I was some kind of killer on a rampage. I was just a guy trying to make ends meet, with a taste for orange alcohol juice. Not a drunk driver, like they all said. I did it all the time, and I was so very careful. I followed every single sign, and even when I messed up it was at the speed limit and nobody got hurt.

So many people hit other people and kill people and wreck countless cars on a daily basis. All I did was to destroy my own car and a tree that I'd happily pay for. Now they're calling me dangerous, a threat to everyone on the road. It's just not true. I'm a working guy who made a mistake on the road and veered off. And they don't want to let me drive at all. They didn't understand that I'm a trained racer, that I drive better than anyone else on the road. Just because some of the vodka was still on my breath, because the number on that breathalyzer came up a little higher than some legal limit set by a bunch of incompetent legislators, they've decided to turn my innocent accident into a horrific crime.

The court date's set and everything, and the government's lawyer says I should probably plead guilty and look for lenience. He thinks maybe I'll be able to avoid jail that way. He thinks I'm an alcoholic too.