He probably had it coming.

About a month ago, via drunk text (of course), one of my dearest friends asked me to be his date to the Marine Corps Birthday Ball. For me, this is about as no-brainer as decisions get; I would get to wear a fancy dress, get my hair done, hang around with a man in Marine dress blues and drink rum and vodka to my little heart's content. Of course, I said yes. Of course, my answer involved a lot of exclamation points.

 

The friend (hereafter referred to as Marine) is stationed in Kentucky, and figuring out the logistics of the trip was a little difficult because, as a Marine, he has unpredictable work hours. I couldn't fly into Louisville and take a cab to his apartment on the base, because it's something like a 40-minute drive. He couldn't guarantee that he'd be able to pick me up, and when I looked at flights, the cheapest one I saw was around $400. So I decided to drive. I couldn't take any vacation days for the trip, because the company I work for is... not sympathetic to things like Marine Balls and fun and personal days and Needing To Get The Fuck Out Of Virginia Oh My God, so I would have to work a full day and then drive. None of this mattered to me, really, because at the end of all of the driving would be rum! And vodka! And a man in Marine dress blues!

 

On a normal work day, I leave the office around 4:30. The Friday before the ball, I left at 2:30, but I had many important things to do, like go to the gym and buy a clutch to go with my dress and clean up my apartment and, idk, solve world hunger and build a flux capacitator, so by the time I actually began the drive, it was 8 pm. Under normal circumstances, Virginia to Kentucky is about a seven-and-a-half-hour trek; when you have a tiny baby SUV with a tiny 4-cylinder engine, it becomes something more like nine. BUT NO MATTER, READERS! I was Going To Drive! I had my iPod! I wasn't afraid to stop for coffee and large sodas at scary rest stops in the mountains!

All of this went fine, on account of I have many ridiculous songs on my iPod and also, in general, more energy than the average bear, but let me tell you that West Virginia is a really freaking WIDE state, and I spent many hours there, and none of them were wild or wonderful.

To reiterate: the drive is long. It is epically long. I cheered when I saw the Kentucky sign because it felt like a victory, and I had three hours left to drive after that. I almost ran out of gas twice, because I never stop early enough (I'm on a lifelong mission to really see what the REAL gas mileage of my car is) (spoiler: it sucks); I had also been issued a $2 "you owe us" note by the West Virginia toll people because I never have cash and didn't think to stop and get some in the event of the Partial Toll Road that Google informed me that I would, in fact, encounter. Whatever. I survived my road mishaps! I was almost there!

And then, about 40 minutes from the Army base, when I was so bored and tired of driving that counting the mile markers became a fun pastime, a deer ran in front of my car and I plowed right into it.

I grew up in the Midwest, so having deer run in front of my car is not new to me, but I had never hit one before. I had never hit anything, not even a squirrel. Hitting a deer is kind of awful, it makes a really large BANG and it's scary, I'm sure, under the best of circumstances, so you can imagine how fun it is at 3 am on the highway in the middle of Kentucky.

I didn't know what to do, so I just kind of sat in the car in shock for a minute, not blinking, and then called Marine.

"I need you to wake up, because I just hit a deer, and I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO," I said.

He talked to me for a few minutes, asking about the damage and my general mental and physical state, before realizing that I was still driving. At which point he said, "You need to pull over."

"I AM NOT PULLING OVER," I replied. "I AM TERRIFIED THAT THE DAMAGE IS GOING TO BE BAD. THE CAR IS STILL DRIVING, MY HEADLIGHTS STILL WORK, THERE IS HOWEVER THIS SORT OF SCARY SCRAPING NOISE UNDER THE TIRE BUT IT'S NOT CONSTANT SO I THINK I WILL JUST KEEP DRIVING, POSSIBLY FOREVER."

He told me to watch the engine temperature (which was fine) and then, as the scraping got louder and more terrifying, convinced me that I needed to pull off and take a look. I waited until I found an exit that looked well-lit and, you know, populated, not with people playing banjos, and pulled over, right into the parking lot of a Kroger.

The second I stopped the car, the engine started to steam and leak fluid and the temperature gauge flew up. The driver's side door wouldn't open so I had to climb out of the passenger seat and then walk around the car to look at the damage (note: I always drive barefoot, and did all of this sans shoes; it never occurred to me that I possibly wouldn't want engine fluid and/or shards of things on my feet. I should not really be allowed to leave the house unsupervised). Honestly, I didn't - and don't - think it looked that bad; the bumper was pushed in and the hood was up and the driver's side headlight was smashed, but for taking out a deer, it wasn't awful. 

But since the engine was now LEAKING and STEAMING and OVERHEATING, whether or not to drive the car became an issue. And then it sort of struck me that I was alone, in a Kroger parking lot, at 330 am, in Kentucky. I didn't know WHERE in Kentucky. JUST AT THE KROGER. HANGING OUT. Which is much less exciting than chilling at the Holiday Inn. It was possibly even less exciting than Virginia. (I kid. Nothing is less exciting than Virginia.)

Marine said, "Um. I am on a tank in the middle of a field. You need to call someone with internet who can figure out where you are."

I thought about this for approximately 10 seconds and then called Sam, who I have known via flickr for about two years. By my 330 am logic, the fact that I met him ON the Internet would mean that he was awake and had access TO the Internet 24 hours a day. Half of this was correct; the half that was incorrect required a pot of coffee and a lot of crying and apologizing from me, but in general Sam was very nice and amazing, and dealt patiently with my sobbing and my shaking and my feeling like I was going to puke, and guided me turn by turn to a hotel 3 miles away, and talked to me the entire FORTY MINUTES it took me to get there, because I had to keep pulling over to let the engine cool down. Those little roadside breaks were loads of fun for both of us, as I'm not by nature a very patient person to begin with, and when you throw in the fact that I was crying and shaking at 330 am and on back roads in Kentucky with a busted-up car, I'm sure I was a peach to deal with. The conversation was limited mostly to me wailing, "CAN I DRIVE YET?" and "I JUST NEED TO CALL MY DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD."

Eventually, he got me to the hotel, I cried into the lobby phone and the night manager gave me a room, I called my dad, and then I sat in the bed wide-eyed until 6, when I managed to get two hours of sleep (after crawling under the covers and crying, "I WISH MY CAT WAS HERE"). 

I spent most of Saturday on the phone with my incredibly unhelpful insurance company; the claims adjuster actually made me cry and then said, brusquely, "Well, I don't know what to tell you, you're in kind of a bad situation." (I told my mom this; her response was essentially, "Oh, HELL NO," and she then spent several hours on the phone with said company avenging me. She got to the guy in question and told me later, "It's not just you, I didn't care for him either." WIN!) (sidebar: my mom and her friend took out a nine-point buck with a car a week ago. WE SHARE OUR LIFE EXPERIENCES, PEOPLE!)

Anyway, my car is really old, and they had warned me that because its blue book value isn't very high that it might be a total loss. aka, start car-shopping, silly girl. They wouldn't know for sure til Monday, though, because idk if you knew, but people only get into car accidents during the week, so claims inspectors don't work on the weekends. Perfectly logical! 

This made me super sad. My car is ridiculous, and old, and PURPLE, but I love the crap out of it, and I am not really interested in a new car. I did some research online, sort of sadly, but then the inspector called and told me the damage was $500 short of being a total loss so it would, in fact, be repaired.

Of course, they won't pay for a tow to Virginia (that would make them helpful, or something, and they're not into that), so I have to go back to Kentucky to retrieve it. The joke, ultimately, is on them; my policy expired last Wednesday and prior to this trip, I had already paid to switch to a different company, where I'll receive the exact same coverage for half the price and probably a lot less "Well then don't hit a deer in Kentucky, idk" attitude. I'm taking a one-way flight and then making the entire damn return drive IN DAYLIGHT, most likely gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles and gazing around shiftily for any deer on the side of the road. Because I'm sure they're congregating silently, just waiting to exact their revenge. I am sure of it because on the drive home from Kentucky the first time (a very creepy guy from Virginia gave me a ride, and I don't want to talk about it except to tell you that at least an hour of it was him questioning why I didn't want to date him), I saw the deer I hit. I named him Randy. And he is dead.

 

I am not immune to ridiculous; in fact, my life is always full of it, but this was big, even for me. On Saturday morning, after not sleeping and crying and fighting with the insurance company and assuring my parents that I was okay and having approximately 74 different nervous breakdowns, Marine finally got done being in a tank and came to get me at my hotel. I got a hug, and coffee, and we were in the car, and I was calmer, and I said, "My life is SHENANIGANS. Who hits a deer in Kentucky?" and he said, "Yeah, I didn't want to say anything before, but really, I'm not all that surprised that this happened to you."

 

We did make it to the ball, by the way. Marine paid for all my drinks and told me repeatedly that no one would know I was a deer killer just by looking at me. He's a keeper, that one.