QOTD: What Strange Object Made a Sudden Impact With Your Ride?

It came out of nowhere — abruptly, suddenly, and violently — like an action scene in a Martin Scorsese movie. A deafening bang drowned out the music on my radio and rattled my one good eardrum. This was followed by an explosion of green leaves, a savage hammering of the brake pedal, and a lot of creative swearing.

Someone had thrown a damn cabbage at my car.

Only thing is, it wasn’t my car. I had just gotten a new demo from the dealership — a full-sized sedan as a reward for making the company an obscene amount of money on a string of Very Profitable Deals. Come to think of it, the Dealer Principal should’ve given me a truck. No matter. At least I was out of the compact car that smelled like Keith Richard’s ashtray.

It was a Saturday evening and I was driving through town on my way to see some long-forgotten girl. As I goosed the throttle to make it up the hill just past the sporting goods store, that cabbage struck the top corner of the windshield and exploded into what seemed like a million leafy greens. In retrospect, I was lucky. Cabbages are dense; a broadside strike amidships would’ve left quite the dent. Good thing the miscreants were poor shots.

Without thinking, I cranked the wheel to the right and gave chase. Reaching the sidewalk, I hove the car in Park, jumped out, and tore after them on foot. Yes, this was a bad idea and no, I wasn’t thinking. My 6’6” frame is a deterrent to most troublemakers but not all of them. Fortunately, this was about 15 years ago when crime was so nonexistent in our capital city that the police had only recently started carrying guns.

I chased the young skeets to a townhouse and watched them vault inside the place like Sergey Bubka while slamming the front door. Naturally, I marched up and pounded on that door, demanding a pound of flesh (or a cabbage to throw back at them, if I remember my diatribe correctly). The woman who answered the door said she was in charge of the skeets, looked at me plaintively, and promised they would be dealt with. She probably gave them more cabbages.

What’s the weirdest thing ever to hit your car? Almost everyone has a story, whether it was an errant piece of trash, an act of malice, or some roadkill you vaporized on the way to the cottage. What’s yours?

[Image: daseaford/ Bigstock.com]