• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The driver of the other vehicle immediately jumped out.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he yelled.

“Sorry, sir,” I replied. “The road was slippery. I couldn’t stop.”

“The hell you couldn’t. Shit. Look at my fuckin’ truck!”

At that point, I didn’t say a word. I just kept my head down, stared at my feet, and waited for the cops to arrive. I knew absolutely nothing would be solved by talking to this angry guy who was obviously going to paint a false picture of what happened.

“Fuckin’ kids on the roads,” he screamed into the night. “God damn it!” Then he looked at me. “You’re insured, ain’t ya? You’re going to pay for this, ya know? You better have goddamn insurance!”

I remained quiet, just nodding my head when it seemed appropriate. I wanted this guy to know as little as possible about me.

The police finally arrived at the scene. One officer approached us while the other surveyed the damage to both our vehicles.

“Okay, guys, what happened here?” the officer asked, shifting his eyes around to take in the scene.

“Look,” the other driver said as he pointed at his truck, “this kid smacked right into me when I was trying to make a U-turn. He came from nowhere, going way over the speed limit. Didn’t even see me. He must be drunk or something. He might even be retarded; he doesn’t even talk.”

As I listened to this story I couldn’t help smiling to myself. Mr. U-Turn was digging himself in deeper and deeper.

The officer eyeballed me. “Well, son, is that what happened?”

“Not exactly, Officer,” I replied calmly. Then in a confident, methodical way, I proceeded to explain my version of what occurred. “Actually, for me to have been speeding, the damage to both of our vehicles would have been a lot more severe. As you can see, the damage is minimal.”

The driver looked stunned. I didn’t seem at all like the passive, stupid kid he’d been screaming at a few minutes earlier.

“From the skid marks evident here,” I continued, pointing to the road, “you can see that, in fact, I did see the vehicle way ahead of time and made an effort to stop.” I continued on in defense-attorney style for another minute.

By the time I’d finished, the cop figured he had a handle on the situation. “Come here,” he yelled to his partner, who was still examining the vehicles. “You gotta hear this one. You won’t believe it.”

The last I saw of Mr. U-Turn, they were giving him four separate citations and lecturing him about lying to the police.

That type of incident was not unusual in my life. Early on, I recognized the value of pretending to be dumber than I really was. I liked to watch people, to study their tendencies, to let them reveal the best they were capable of, and also the worst. Then I had a way to protect myself if they tried to hurt me.

For as long as I could remember, I’d had a hard time trusting people. I’m not sure why, but I believed that, given the chance, almost everyone would try to hurt me. It may have been those true-crime stories I was raised on. Or just an unlucky string of run-ins. Certainly, the messages I got from my parents were conflicting and confusing.

My mother, in particular, seemed completely unpredictable. One time she gave me a hundred dollars to go to the mall and buy new sneakers. I hadn’t had a new pair of shoes in over two years, and she wanted to reward me because she felt I’d been behaving well—meaning that I’d done everything she asked of me and hadn’t challenged her.

I was so excited when I walked in the door with my brand-new Nikes. “Mom, check these out!”

She looked at me but didn’t say a word, so I said again, “Mom, come look at my shoes.”

“Are you happy now? Are you happy, Jason, that you always get what you want?”

I couldn’t believe what was happening. I knew I couldn’t have done anything wrong because I hadn’t even been home. All I’d done was go out to get the new shoes like she said I could.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“You’re totally selfish! Your father’s all upset that I let you spend so much money on shoes.” Ah, so that explained it. “What the hell