Casualties of the road

One smashed and battered baseball cap lying in the middle of the highway is not an uncommon sight. Sighting two in a single day as I made my way downtown was a little disconcerting. Oh sure, I've lost my share of gas receipts out the open car window. First, it lifts up and flutters around the cab of the truck tempting me to grab it. Then, it is swiftly whisked out of the moving vehicle by 50 mile per hour gusts that slip inside the car as I make my way down the highway.


Convertibles and open car windows are a logical by-product of a subtropical tourist-destination in the pacific. I've seen everything from ball caps to pieces of luggage littering the side of the road at some point or other. 


I, myself, also lost a hat once while driving. But I had a valid excuse for not picking it up: it disappeared. I was tooling down the road at 50 mph in my Jeep Wrangler, with the top down, just minding my own business and enjoying the view. Then, without warning, the car in front of me decided to slow down to make a left hand turn off of the highway. I was very close behind that car so I slammed on my brakes. An interesting thing happens when you do this in a short, wheel-base car. It starts swerving left, then right, then left as you try to overcompensate for every previous turn of the steering wheel.  I ended up swerving into the oncoming lane and completing a 180 degree turn, ending up nose-to-nose with the car I was trying to avoid. It all happened in less than one minute and when my jeep came to a stop I burst out laughing ; my daughter, in the passenger seat next to me, burst into tears. Yes, there I was without my hat (I never even felt it leave my head), in a near-fatal accident, entirely intact and without any scrapes or dents, staring at two tourists who sat in their car, staring at me, looking like they were in shock.


Maybe it is not so much that my hat disappeared as that I needed to swiftly get turned right-way-around on the highway and just get out of there. No damage done, except to everyone's psyche. Oh well, what is one ball cap in exchange for an undamaged car and no injuries? A fair exchange, to be sure.


I'm hoping those ball caps weren't lost in a similar fashion as mine and that a playful gust just grabbed them off and discarded them on the road. I did whisper a prayer of thanks, once again, as these little mementos raced under my car tires.


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