Cruel Drool

Case files arrive in orderly stack, set at right angles, along the left side of my desk. Transmittal sheets, demand letters, police reports, claim activity indexes, and the never-ending assembly line of medical records, chiropractor narratives, and massage logs.

One case blurs into the next. Rear-ender. T-bone. Side-swipe. Air bags. Seat belts. Neck pain. Head ache. Lumbar disc bulge. MRI. Wage loss.

And then the whining begins.

But, it's all so much white noise, formless buzzing, without meaning. It is all so sterile and distant. It's words on paper and lies under oath. The abstract idea of a crash holds no emotional meaning for me any longer.

But then, the weather changes, and on a day like today, at slightly higher elevations, like that around my office, the temperature dips below freezing. The bright blue January sky lets the warmth contained by clouds to evaporate, and the northwest rain-soaked streets become ice skating rinks.

I sat eating a yellowy goo at the Mediterranean buffet, just up the hill from my office. The goo was good, and tasted unidentifiably familiar. I sat beside the big bay window facing the street. Slowly, one-by-one, I began to notice the cars heading up the hill having more and more problems. The ice sheet was thickening, doing nothing for uphill traction.

One unfortunate lady ("dumb bitch" according to my lunch companion) refused to put down her cell phone while she careened one-handed backward down the hill in her minivan. Eventually, a tire caught a patch of dry pavement and she stopped, straddling the line, blocking both lanes of traffic, still talking on the phone.

While she waited, the impatient man in the Volvo behind her made an end run. Now, Volvos are great cars, with great safety control features. However, ice is ice, and rubber is rubber.

He slid out of control inches from the minivan. The boy sitting behind me gaped with amazement. His dad gave an, "oh Oh OH!" My lunch buddy grinned with grizzly excitement. Even I, jaded as I am to the very notion of an automobile collision, set my jaw against the gory exhilaration. I wanted so badly, with passionate desire, to see the metal twist, and to hear the screech and ripple of a tearing fender. I wanted to hear the crack and smash of breaking glass.

But it never came.

Moments later, another car slid by, down the slope, on a trajectory toward another van stopped at the bottom of the ill. And again, disaster was averted by mere inches. The disappointment of the patrons and wait staff, now gathered around our window seat was palpable. The spectators, all of us, wanted action. We wanted to see the crash. We wanted to witness the destruction. I, for one, felt a lust-like urgency for it to happen.

ultimately, I was let down. Probably for the best. No one, it seems, was hurt. It wasn't until later, upon reflection, while I drove the monkey home from monkey care, that I contemplated the feelings that I had experienced. Was it blood lust? Perhaps. Though I wished no specific ill on the participants.

Why is it that millions of NASCAR fans pay big money to watch hours of racing with the mere hope of a five second thrill? Why does freeway traffic stall for miles behind rubbernecking gawkers at an accident scene? Why do we revel in the ill-fate of others?

Maybe it's just me. I'm really OK with that.

I suspect, though, that it's all of us. Maybe it's curiosity. Maybe it's a subconsciously sadistic surge. Maybe it's an inherent celebration of our Darwinian superiority over the less-fit in our gene pool.

Who knows.

I do know that my companion and I both drove out of the parking lot, leaving much room in front of and behind our cars. I, for one, got back to my office in one piece.