karma

I broke my streak: I hit a deer. It's karma (no pun intended-pun inevitable). Just the week before I had been smugly grinning on the inside as a roomful of people - of which I was one - was posed a question: how many of you have ever hit a deer? Nearly everyone in the room raised a hand. But not mee, I couldn't help but hold my head a little higher, thinking "I haven't."

3 Days later - WHAM BAM-whatthehellwasthat!!??!? Young deer, solid, ran head first - actually - I think he hopped - over the guard rail, into the front of my car, killing him instantly, and taking out my right turn signal totally.

Now my car is fixed, Jake hammered it out with a sledgehammer and replaced the turn signal. But, the fender is chipped and it, along with the front hood, have that softly crumpled look. Like slightly over-ripe fruit with the skin starting to wrinkle.

The night before, my left front headlight burnt out. So I was a right-eyed car that could only indicate turning left. I avoided driving at night. But - then I had to work, covering a politician's panel on the economy, open to the public, at 7 PM.

I saw the highway patrolman's car, the reflector strips lining the length of his sedan illumiunated by my one headlight, and yep, he pulled me over. My insurance had just run it's annual course, and I hadn't put my new card in the glove compartment yet.

"It's been one of those weeks," I told him. We laughed, I got a verbal warning, and Jake fixed the lights over the next two days. Everything until this last paragraph is the start to a catastrophic series of events in a work of fiction that ends in jail or Jamacia; depending on whether it's tragic, comic, or tragically comic.