I’m in a philosophical frame of mind today. I’m overcome with this guttural urge to search my soul for perspective, context, a greater meaning, a higher plane, a more centered existence. Or maybe “search” isn’t the right word. Maybe “plunder” is a better word. Or maybe “blitz” is the best word. As in, feeling the need to blitz through the gates of my soul the way shoppers used to blitz through the front entrances of large retail chains during Black Friday sales, charging through the doors as soon as they opened and then sprinting down the aisles in a desperate, fevered attempt to hunt down all the best bargains.
That’s where my head is at right now. Sprinting down the aisles of my soul, desperately searching for all the best perspectives.
Jesus, what a three weeks it’s been. What a bottomless mindfuck of torture and anger and existential misery. What a prominent place it has taken in my head, when I had about 14 million other things I could have put in my head.
It has taken up so much space in my head, in fact, that I will now write a mini-novel about it, broken down into mini-chapters.
Would you like to read it?
Well, if you insist….
Chapter 1
It’s Tuesday, September 29, 2026, around 9:30 pm. I’m driving home from a jazz show in a merry mood, taking the same streets I’ve taken dozens of times these past few years. Suddenly, I feel a loud thump. I hear a loud noise. I’ve never experienced this in a car before, in more than half-a-century of driving.
Lord Almighty, what happened?
Oh, dear God in Heaven – what just happened?!!
Chapter 2
My car has been hit. By another car. Pretty violently.
Damn!
I pull over to the side of the road. I get out. I look at my car. The front, rear and driver’s sides are fine. But the passenger side has been bashed all to hell. The front passenger door and rear passenger door are caved in. The front passenger window is shattered. The side airbag has engaged.
Well, that wasn’t in the script for this evening.
Chapter 3
A car pulls up behind me. A woman gets out and approaches me. She asks if I’m okay. I say yes, I’m fine, then ask if she’s okay. She is okay. She seems very nice. Others approach from homes along the street, asking if we’re okay, all being very nice.
“Is everyone okay?” they ask.
All’s fine and well, I tell them. Nary a bump, bruise or scratch. The other woman is okay. We tell everyone we’re fine, we’re okay.
The woman apologizes, says she didn’t see me. I’m not sure what just happened, other than the front of her car collided with the side of my car. “T-boned,” as they call it. Since she immediately apologized, my assumption is that she felt like she did something wrong.
I look at the damage to her car. Nothing much I can see.
I look back at the damage to my car, and immediately decide that repairing it would cost more than the car is worth. It’s an old car as these things go (2013), and not a high-end model. It serves as a backup to our main car. We only drive it locally. We didn’t want an expensive car for our main vehicle, let alone our backup one.
Anyway, the backup car is a total loss. It’s been totaled. I can look at it and tell.
The last time I was in an accident like this was never. And I’ve been driving since 1974.
I suggest to the woman that we just trade our info and handle this ourselves rather than getting the police involved and making an official report. I’m sort of in a hurry to get home. I don’t much feel like dragging this all out into something formal that could take an hour to deal with. And anyway, my car is not worth all that much, monetarily speaking.
The car still drives just fine after the accident. No engine damage at all. So I’ll just drive it home and we can figure out what to do later.
She agrees. We say goodbye, and drive off.
Chapter 4
Later that night, the woman and I trade texts. I suggest we come to a reasonable agreement between adults that doesn’t involve insurance companies. She doesn’t disagree.
I thank her again for being so nice. We say goodbye.
Chapter 5
It’s a day later. The woman and I trade a few more texts.
She decides she’d rather go through the insurance company. She gives me her info. Maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s the best way.
Chapter 6
Her insurance company contacts me. The agent tells me how things will proceed from here.
The other driver has admitted liability, that the accident was her fault. At some point they’ll send me a check for the value of the car, pre-crash.
My assumption is she ran a stop sign or was texting and driving or some combination of both. That’s why she admitted liability and wants to get all this over with, ASAP. She’s probably thanking her lucky stars the cops weren’t involved.
Chapter 7
I spend the next 17,000 years speaking to billions of different insurance reps from millions of different departments advising me about the trillions of things I need to do for them so I can get the money I’m owed by them because their insured driver plowed into my car through no fault of my own.
They run some numbers over the next couple of weeks and decide the car is a total loss. They’ll pay me the value of the car, pre-crash.
Chapter 8
Here’s a partial list of things that suck in northern New Jersey:
- Customer service
- Phone reception
- Customer service
- Rental car options
- Customer service
This little car-wreck episode requires me to be on the phone a lot, talking to insurance agents and car people and various others, which in turn requires me to physically walk outside, because the satellite reception here is so bad I cannot carry on a phone conversation inside the house.
Otherwise, it’s an endless series of “can you hear me?” and “you’re breaking up” and “can you hear me now?”
At least I got some exercise. You know, walking downstairs and outside and all…
Chapter 9
The insurance company informs me I have a right to a rental car while all this is being worked out. Great! I check out local rental car places.
Remember last chapter, when I wrote about how the rental car options suck around here? Well, I wasn’t lying.
They don’t really have traditional rental car offices anywhere near where we live. Instead, it’s some Mom & Pop car repair shop that might rent a car if they have one available, but since none of these places has yet discovered the internet, you can’t find anything online. I live in a place that is both fabulously wealthy but has not taken a step forward since 1951 or so. Go figure.
The insurance company will pay $28 a day for rental cars. The going rate around here is $60 a day – when you can find an actual rental car place that answers the phone or returns calls or knows how to speak coherently.
So, renting a car means taking a $32 financial hit every day you rent it.
Chapter 10
We’re down to one car, and we need at least two cars with our oldest daughter driving. So, we go car shopping.
We visit the nearest dealership, the same one that sold us a couple cars when we first moved here in 2023. We tell them we saw a used car they advertised online for $16,500 and want to take it for a test drive.
We take said car for said test drive. It drives fine. It’s a fine car. In my mind I’m already buying it.
We return to the dealership, looking to get the deal done. In short order the salesman lets us know that the final price will be around $21,000, what with fees and taxes and his commission and everything else car dealerships squeeze out of every customer who has ever walked into a GD car dealership since the first GD one opened for business.
“Hmmm,” I say. “The online price said $16,500.”
“Oh,” he replies, “we lose money on the online price. But here’s what I can do….”
He shuffles some papers and walks to the back of the dealership and returns and says he can let us drive away for around $21,000.
I tell him I figured with fees and taxes the final price would come out to around $18,000. But no way am I paying $21,000.
He gets annoyed, shuffles some papers, tells me here’s what he can do, walks to the back of the dealership, returns to the desk, and says we can have the car for around $21,000.
I tell him, “Nah. Not happening.”
So he barks at me: “But I’m trying to work you a deal!”
I tell him he’s not trying to work a deal at all. If he were, he’d get closer to $16,500 than $21,000.
He and I go back and forth for a few minutes, back and forth, back and forth, until I finally get up and walk away.
He’s still barking at me as I exit his fucking dealership and drive the fuck away.
Chapter 11
The insurance company finally gets all the millions of things it needs from me, and now it’s only a matter of sending me the check. Yayyyy!!!!
Chapter 12
We did end up buying a new car! Well, a used car, but still. At a much smaller business closer to home, from a very nice man. Yaaaayyyyy!!!
Chapter 13
The insurance company check finally arrives. But it’s made out to my wife instead of me, because this car is in her name. So now she has to deposit it and transfer the money my way. Just one little extra step in an endless stream of little extra steps.
Oh, and this morning the new (used) car we bought wouldn’t start.
Would. Not. Start.
I bought it five days ago. And now it won’t start.
I call a tow service to tow it back to the place we bought it so they can fix it. The tow guy tells me the battery was dead, it’s an old battery, it never should have been included in a car any reputable business would sell.
But the guy who sold it to me was so nice….
North Jersey. Whattayagonnado?
Chapter 14
I’m in a real philosophical frame of mind right now. I’m overcome with this urge to search my soul for perspective, context, a greater meaning, a higher plane…..
*****
The above narrative does not begin to describe the torture and frustration I’ve had to deal with these past three weeks. All the bureaucracy and red tape, the excuses and lies, the indifference and manipulation, the bullshit and bullshit and bullshit and endless, endless bullshit.
Every day has brought some new and ingenious form of torment. Just when you think you’ve crawled out of the abyss and into the light, you’re hit with another bang on the head that drives you back down again. I feel like I’m the main character in a Whack-a-Mole game.
Now, I have a pretty decent resolve when it comes to this kind of thing. I have my little tantrums and episodes, then get back down to business. But there were times when I just sat there, staring into space, telling myself the following:
Fuck it. Just fuck it, man. What’s the point? Why even bother? Why even wake up in the morning, when this is all you have to look forward to?
That’s where this episode took me in less than three weeks. Wondering why even bother. Wondering if any amount of effort is really worth the amount of effort.
This is what we’ve been reduced to as a species. Working ourselves into a boiling stew of pain and misery and then resignation, all in service to the machines and technology that run our lives.
Is this why we crawled out of the caves? Is this all we’ve accomplished in whatever thousands of years? Having regular breakdowns over all the things we think we control but never have and never will?
And the sad thing is, I’m one of the lucky ones. That’s the real kicker here. I have the means and wherewithal to work the problem. I have enough time and money – mainly money – to afford solutions that will get me from Point A to Point B to Point Z.
Plenty of people don’t have enough money to buy a bowl of rice, let alone navigate all this bullshit.
So, I’ve been working the problem. I’ve set aside the time and paid the money to get from Point A to Point Z.
And I’ll get there. Eventually this will all work itself out, and one day I’ll look back and laugh about it.
Because I’m one of the “lucky” ones.
*****
Tonight, I returned to the jazz club from three weeks ago to hear the quartet from three weeks ago work its magic. I did my best to forget all this bullshit and just listen. And I mostly succeeded.
I’m one of the lucky ones. God save all the unlucky ones.
Is that the perspective I’m looking for?
I’m not sure. But it’ll have to do for now.
Image: Self-explanatory.
