I wasn’t going to share this.

But I’ve been hanging onto it for the better part of two years now, and I think I need to put it somewhere outside my own head.

So here we go.

It was a bright Thursday morning in Cape Girardeau. Clear skies. Dry roads. A perfect day for driving. I was heading out to pick up a research participant — a real person with a real appointment, counting on me to show up — when the unthinkable happened. A Cape Girardeau police officer driving a Ford Explorer with a roll bar on the front end hit me.

He totaled the car. A Ford Focus. Air bags deployed — both from the steering wheel and the passenger side door.

The car was a company one, owned and insured by Gibson Center, the same one I use to transport people who are trying to hold their lives together long enough to get some help. Gone. In less than ten seconds. Because a police officer in a marked vehicle was running a red light on a sunny morning with zero environmental factors working against him.

The thing is, I did everything right. I was turning on a green light, watching for traffic, going slow through the intersection.

I keep saying that out loud because it continues to surprise me. I was in my lane. I was paying attention. My cell phone was in my back pocket. I was doing my job, following every rule of the road. And then none of it mattered. He wasn’t watching, and in one careless moment his inattention became my problem — my call back to the office, my scramble to figure out how the day still functions, my explanation to my supervisor who then had to explain to the participant why I wouldn’t be coming.

How do you handle that? The second someone’s careless act lands in your lap, they transfer their carelessness to you, and now it’s impacting your day.

You stand in the aftermath doing the stuff — insurance, logistics, the supervisor of the police officer, the schedule, the former Ford Focus now a hunk of twisted metal that belongs to your employer — and somewhere in the middle of all that you realize you’re also just a little bit shaken. No. A lot shaken. Where’s the slot in the accident report for that?

The goal here isn’t sympathy. It isn’t venting my anger, although I was angry. What stays with me is that no one stopped to check on me. Only the police supervisor showed up, and he claimed his officer did nothing wrong.

What I keep thinking about is how thoroughly we sell ourselves the idea that doing it right is its own protection. We prioritize it, teach it to our kids, internalize it ourselves. Follow the rules, stay alert, keep your eyes open, and you will be just fine.

Unless on a morning like this one, you follow every rule and a police car still crashes into you.

I made a phone call to my supervisor. She handled the paperwork and helped reschedule the pickup. Me? I wrote down what happened, thinking Gibson’s insurance company would want to know.

But I’m writing this far removed from the accident now.

I did everything right.

I guess I just needed someone else to hear it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​