Birthdays Done Right

At the beginning of 2003, I bought a brand new, black Chevrolet S10 pick-up truck.  It was the ZR2 edition, so it had the jacked up tires to make it more manly.  It was a small truck, but it was the perfect compromise between the height and utility of a truck and the maneuverability and convenience of a car.  It was my first brand-new car, the first car I had bought for myself, and I loved it immensely.  I named him “Onyx,” because every car should have a cool name.

A few months after buying the car, I drove up to College Station, TX and took my then fiancée out for her birthday.  I decided to surprise her with a nice dinner at Red Lobster (the restaurant she was always bugging me to take her) and a scenic drive out in the country.  College Station was sort of remote, so without too much effort, it was possible to drive far enough away from the city to get away from the lights and see the stars.  Everything was going according to plan, and we were on our way out to my favorite little deserted road to look at millions of stars splayed across the night sky, when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.  The moment I realized what it was, I started screaming, because well…there was nothing else to do.  It was moving too fast for me to react in any other way.

A second later a deer slammed into the side of my truck.  That’s right, in a twist of the usual story, a deer hit me instead of the other way around.  The doe crossed six lanes of traffic, bounced off my truck, flopped over in the road, and lay stunned.  I immediately pulled off to the side of the road to assess the situation.  I was standing there looking at that poor deer struggle to try to get up, wondering what I could do to help her, when I heard a deep, thrumming noise approaching from the left.  A moment later a big, jacked-up truck with four-foot tires broke through the darkness and ran right over the deer.  There was a faint squishing sound, and then it was all over.  I guess in retrospect, it was a blessing in disguise, because she was probably suffering immeasurably.  With no way to help her anymore, I turned to see the damage on my truck.

My left front fender and wheel well were completely crushed.  So much so that the fender was actually bent back onto the tire, rubbing and scraping across the tread.  The left side of the hood was crumpled.  The front bumper, left headlight, and grill were shattered.  In one moment, that deer had completely immobilized my truck.  I called the emergency number on my driver’s license, and a police car appeared a few minutes later.  The officer took an accident report, called me a tow truck, and then offered us a ride back to my fiancée’s  apartment. 

So, our night ended up with us in the back of a police car.  And I say that if your birthday does not end with you in the back of a police car, then you’re not doing it right.  But maybe do it for having fun, instead of being target practice for a suicidal deer.