My car never bodes well in February.

I was involved in a hit and run today. I was on the receiving end, so not the good side ... unless of course you consider being the hittee and not the hitter the "good" side in the morally upstanding sense. But right now I'm seeing it in a violated sense, and that's not something I would consider good. But then again, after what I put the guy who hit me through, I doubt he'll be hit-and-running again anytime soon. I could also be totally, utterly wrong. But let us not dwell on the likely. Cool.

Oh, and fyi, in an attempt to lighten my own mood, I'm going to refer to this not as a "hit and run", but as a "hit 'n' run", or maybe even a "hit 'n' fun"? Because if I'm being a Debbie Upper here and not a Debbie Downer, I've got to look at the bright side. And the bright side of a hit 'n' fun is that you get to be part of a real live car chase. Commence the story.

I was driving down Montrose and went through a yellow light to the next intersection, which is really just another light in the middle of the same huge freaking intersection with room for two cars max, me being the second car. This guy in a decked out silver mini-sports car convertible behind me decides that rather than observe this calculable lack of room for another car he should just be an idiot and smash his car into mine. You know, so we can all fit in there in the middle of the intersection like a happy, cozy little car family. So he runs the red, crashes into me, and I'm like great, now I'm going to have to kick this guy's ass pull over and work this all out.

I notice he's got his blinker on so I turn right when the light turns green and begin to pull off to the side. This is when he slows down as though he's doing the same in one instant and in another he is flooring past me and zooms into the distance. Maybe I should have stayed put, taken down witness names (there were several present) and left it at that. But I did not do that, no. Oh, goodness, no. I put the pedal to the metal, high-tailed it after him and proceeded to chase a man around Chicago's north side for the next 10 minutes.

This guy, he pulled every trick in the book to try to ditch me. He attempted to cut me off by heading through several near-red lights, but could never time it just right. Then when a light turned green he would either A)not go right away, or B)Floor it and then slam on his breaks in an attempt to get me to crash into him. He wove. He actually DID pull over twice, and both times floored it shortly after I pulled up behind him. He made a U-turn in the middle of a busy street. I followed. It honestly felt like The Italian Job in a much more watered-down, "Yeah, I'm in a Taurus" way. Awesome. On top of that I laid on the horn like a circus-ready clown car and constantly signaled for him to pull over using full body flailing movements. I looked completely crazy. No one thought that was awkward.

Did I forget to mention that I Google-411ed the Chicago police during all of this? Yeah. Apparently the automated robotrons at Google DO NOT DETECT PANIC, and still manage to come up with a huge list of what you might mean when you say "POLICE, Chicago, Illinois".

Operator: I'm sorry, your request came up with too many options. What's your zipcode so we can narrow your results?
Me: 60625
Operator: ... Okay. We'll skip that part. Top 5 listings ...

I think I picked number four, which was the closest description to Chicago police I could decipher from the given options. But the phone, it just rang and rang, the whole time I'm trying to keep up with Mr. Hit'n'fun's shennanigans, and I finally just hung up. Next time I'm calling 911 without hesitation.

I am sad to say he finally lost me by cutting off a bus and wheeling to the right at a red light. I wasn't about to put myself or anyone else in danger for this guy. I did, of course, write down every detail I could, including a note about how horribly 90s this guy's sunglasses were. Iridescent sports shades with neon frames? Somebody arrest this guy for fashion homicide, OMG!

Here's the kicker: I'm not reporting it. There are a few reasons for this.
1) The damage he inflicted on my purty little Treasure is only an extension of damage already there from when this happened. Instead of having it fixed back then, I took a cash settlement from the insurance company, backpacked Europe with it, and have been driving with a cracked bumper ever since. So the insurance on the back bumper is null and void anyway. (Totally worth it, btw)

2) My tabs are 3 days expired. Yeah, yeah, that's not much of an argument, but can you imagine if after getting hit, losing a car chase, and dealing with filing reports with insurance and police, I am the one who gets in trouble? 

3) It's way more stressful right now just thinking of having to deal with this than just letting it go and moving on. At the very least, I hope I make that guy think twice before screeching away from another accident scene. Do not piss off Debbie. She may be a Debbie Upper but she will throw DOWN. Or something. Screw it, I lost this one.

p.s. Right after I got home I bumped and shattered a ceramic pot of soil growing lavender, a plant that is ironically used to calm the nerves and bring on feelings of peaceful serenity.

Here's to a better tomorrow, folks. :) It could have been worse.