Sometimes the best lessons come at you hard and fast. When I learned that, despite appearances, the batteries in my Operation game could NOT be recharged by sticking the tweezers in an electrical outlet, the knowledge came so hard and fast that it about blew me across the room. Likewise, when I learned that wasps could outrun a fishing boat despite their small size, they were coming fast, and stinging hard.

I ran into someone the other night who learned a few lessons. At least, I hope he did.

It was an hour or so after dark, and a little drizzly. My wife and I were in my car, headed for a basketball game; he was in his car, pulling out of a gas station. (When I said I "ran into him," I was being quite literal.) I saw him pulling out, but had just enough time to say a few choice words and try some quick but futile evasive maneuvers, the key word being "futile." The left front corner of his car slammed into the right front corner of mine. It was one of those weird paradoxes of time; it seemed like it took forever, but also seemed to happen very quickly.

I heard the collision before I actually felt it; then, suddenly, the world was white with an orange-ish glow, and I was being pummeled by a very soft pillow. The glow disappeared and the pillow went away, and a few seconds later I regained all of my senses… except for the sense of sight; my glasses had flown off, and I couldn't find them. It was too dark to see, and I couldn't feel them anywhere; I was afraid to move my feet, because I had a sneaking suspicion that the glasses had ended up somewhere down on the floorboards.

I asked my wife if she was hurt, and she said she wasn't; I asked her if she could see my glasses anywhere, and she said she couldn't. I keep a flashlight in the center console; I dug it out, turned it on, looked around, and there my glasses were: right down by my feet. With all that had just happened and was still happening, it was strange to be relieved that my glasses were unharmed; I guess that's the mindset you develop when you have been a slave to spectacles since third grade.

I retrieved the glasses, put them on, and then felt clear-headed enough to assess the situation. I was in the middle lane of the road, almost between the yellow lines. The car itself wasn't in the next lane, but pieces that moments ago had been part of the car were. Most of those pieces had been attached to what used to be the front of the car, which was now just twisted metal.

The other car was nowhere to be seen; a driver who had stopped to help told me that it had pulled in to a parking lot about 100 feet up the road. Then he asked me if my arm hurt bad, and that was when I started to realize that maybe I wasn't as all right as I had first thought.

I noticed was that the jacket I had been wearing was now a vest; at least, half of it was. The right sleeve was in tatters; it had been burned away. That was the lesson I learned: air bags might save lives, but it takes a small explosion to get them to that point. That small explosion had burned away the sleeve of my jacket; since my arm had been in the sleeve at the time, you can imagine what shape it was in. (It is healing nicely; I probably won't even get much of a scar out of it. And I was looking forward to coming up with a good story about how I got the scar on my arm; something involving alligators, hockey, and a gang of thugs armed with knives…)

But the important lessons were learned by the driver of the other car. At least, I hope he learned something. His Lesson One was: just because one lane of traffic is clear does not mean that the other three lanes are, too. Yep, his excuse was "I saw the car in the closest lane slow down to turn into the gas station, so I figured that it was clear." Never mind the car in the lane next to that one, or the cars coming the other way.

The guy was trying to cross four lanes of traffic because he worked across the street. Literally, across the street; in earlier days, I could have thrown a football from the parking lot he had pulled out of, and hit the front door of the place he worked. (Or at least hit the building; accuracy was never my strong suit.) I could have walked the distance in as much time as it would have taken me to get in the car, fasten the seat belt, start the car, and make the drive. Yet, he had driven, but he had what he considered a good reason. Lesson Two: If you are too tired to walk, you are too tired to drive. No exceptions.

The guy had left work and journeyed across the street because he was out of cigarettes. Which led to Lesson Three: If you can't afford car insurance, you can't afford cigarettes. Yes, despite the fact that it's the law, and despite the fact that the driver was a teenager who was still living with his parents in a very nice neighborhood, he did not have insurance. He had a car, he could afford to put gas in the car, and he could afford to leave work to buy cigarettes. But insurance? Nope, too expensive, even if it is the law.

Fortunately, my policy had an "in case you get hit by some uninsured moron" clause (the actual name is more politically correct, but the intent is the same) so I wasn't left holding the bag. They hauled our cars off to a service station, and the next day I called a local rental agency and made plans to rent a car until the insurance company could make a decision about mine. (One look in the daylight, and I knew what the decision would be. The car was totaled, though it would be a few days before the insurance company agreed.) And in the days that I spent tooling around in the rental car, I learned another lesson: bright yellow cars are easy to find in a parking lot. But that doesn't mean that I'll be buying one.