A few years ago, back when I was living in Bucharest and trying to build my own business, something both weird and funny happened one sunny afternoon. I don’t know why I remembered this today, but I just did.
I was driving on a one-way street in Bucharest, with a colleague, coming from, or going to a business meeting (that I don’t remember anymore). At some point we stopped at a red light. Suddenly, a loud but very short noise came from the back of the car, like something hit us (or we hit something, but we couldn’t, as we were stopped). We both turned our heads instantly. To our surprise, nothing was there. We were both looking in the direction of the noise, which was the right part of the back of the car.
A few second passed by, as we were both staring in disbelief at the back of the car, where there was nothing, but from where we clearly heard the noise. I remember I was driving, and after a few seconds I turned my head forward, to verify the red light. At that point, something in the left rear mirror got my attention.
There was a person getting back up in the left part of the car, smiling and waving at me, and using all sort of gestures and body language to assure me that everything was ok. I was completely puzzled.
Exactly at that moment, the red light changed and we had to start moving again. After we passed the intersection, we pulled over and got out of the car. There was no sign of impact, no bending, no trace. The person that waved at me couldn’t be seen anymore. It was like nothing happened, but we both knew it was.
After we got to the office, we spent probably half an hour trying to imagine what happened. Our best shot was that the guy was simply running, trying to cross the street, didn’t look, and hit the car on the right part of the back. Then he probably fell down, because of the impact, or somehow rolled over the trunk, and got up again on the left part of the back, and that’s when I saw him in the mirror.
For some reason, this incident remained fresh in my memory for years. I still laugh every time I picture that.
And I still wonder what was that guy doing, how did he hit the car, what was he thinking and how must he have feel, being the person that hits the car, and not the other way around.
Photo by Viktor Bystrov on Unsplash
