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I love Prozac in panel 6. As much as he’s a little gossip mongerer today I admire that positive outlook and I’m going to try and adopt some more of that in light of my turbulent holiday this year. Having walked away from what everyone’s saying was a serious accident (I still don’t remember any of it) with nothing more serious then a migraine, a sprained thumb, and some cuts and bruises makes one thoughtful I suppose (it was a marathon 3 day migraine though). I was told originally that she hit towards the rear of the driver’s side which made us spin so much but we went to go see our little car and salvage whatever personal effects were left and I was shocked to see the damage: 
She hit us right in the centre so I’m guessing the structure of the frame kept it from buckling more considering her speed and perhaps because I was turning some more of the impact was diffused but I look at that and I don’t understand how I didn’t at least break a leg or something (you can’t see from the outside but my seat is quite squashed). I have a paramedic cousin in BC who said he’d seen people die from T-bone accidents with less damage done to the car which I found interesting and not in the least comforting… thanks Mike! Some of my friends point out that I should just shut up and be thankful as there was another crash in Kanata that same day where a car got t-boned by a dump truck and a female passenger died. Another friend mentioned that our accident site took a long time to clean up and inconveniently made him late for work… only my mom still gives me sympathy :)
So now the thinking positive thing:
-looking forward to some insurance covered massage therapy to hopefully work out this stiffness and muscle pain.
-Jim had to give up some Marvel contracts he wasn’t able to do which is lost income for us but at least he got the holidays off for the first time in a long time.
-Mazda is giving away a free ipod if you buy a new car before Jan 3 and hopefully we’ll qualify for the customer loyalty discount since this will be our second new car purchase in less than a year! It’s funny as I remember awhile back you guys were giving us some great advice on a new car purchase and I was primarily concerned with fuel economy at the time. I didn’t give a second thought to crash safety and fortunately our choice turned out to be a sturdy little car: it’s apparently the first compact to earn a 5 star rating all the way around.
Today’s vote incentive is a bit of Mary Blair inspired oddness: The Blair Witch (any animators/illustrators out there who don’t know who she is shame! shame! Google her now!)
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January 1st, 2011 at 2:47 pm
I got in an accident like that and my car looked almost exactly the same. The window shattered and I got lots of little cuts all over my back, but I was otherwise ok. Glad to hear you weren’t hurt! It’s scary dealing with this stuff, but if you’ve got good insurance it should turn out alright. Hope you recover soon!
January 1st, 2011 at 4:56 pm
I got T-Boned in a car once… I had rented a car, I think it was a Pontiac Grand Prix (this was in 1991). In Queens, someone had stolen a one way street sign, so I turned the wrong way and tried to escape by ducking down a side street. I got hit by a delivery truck which was doing about 50, spun around and hit the corner of a building with the back of the car.
The building was undamaged (granite), but the car was totally obliterated. I don’t remember any of this, mind you. I got it from a witness a couple of years later by telephone, when I was trying to figure it out. I DO remember a few flashes:
* A cop told me that I was in the “only livable part of the car” and that it was pure luck I wasn’t killed.
* The ambulance crew tried to catheterize me, I misunderstood (just got out of the Marine Corps, too), yelled “GET YOUR HANDS OFF THAT and decked the ambulance guy, who almost flew out the back doors. The woman EMT and another guy were very annoyed, tied me down, and “did it the hard way”. Ow, ow, ow…
* I spent a couple of nights in Belleview Public Hospital (it’s next door to the famous madhouse) getting scanned, and re-scanned, and scanned again because the doctors couldn’t BELIEVE I didn’t have any permanent damage after all that. There was a paranoid schizophrenic old lady in the bed to my right, who kept trying to bite people (so she got tied down), and a drug dealer wrapped up like a mummy in the bed to my left (I asked the cop at the foot of his bed what happened to him, and he laughed and said “He shot at a cop”).
* I was released, after being told to take it easy because I had a severe concussion. My head had gone THROUGH the driver’s side window, then gotten pulled back into the car.
The point of this long, weird story is this: I got out of the hospital and felt fine, except I “lost” the hour or two surrounding the accident, just like you.
I finally saw a neurologist a year or so later, when I was having serious headaches. HE told me that I had a “post concussive syndrome”, that this could last up to 3 years (most fade after one year), and that I could expect problems with short-term memory.
Better see a neurologist! You didn’t have as hard a knock on the head as I did (you had airbags! Lucky!) but you have the same symptoms… Don’t wait a year like I did.
I hope this was helpful…
January 1st, 2011 at 10:55 pm
May I suggest seeing if your insurance covers chiropractic? IT will help greatly with neck pain and any misalignments that may have been caused. I used to suffer from migraines almost 3 days a week until I got treatment. :) So glad that nothing more serious happened!!
January 2nd, 2011 at 1:17 am
I’m in the same boat as you. Had a car accident myself the day after Christmas. Thankfully you’re alright!
January 2nd, 2011 at 1:50 am
If Evil is thinking clearly, he would be very suspicous abbout the fact that Nerd is asking him for help, “wearing” the colours of the Polar Bears.
After looking at that photo of the car and reading the story, you must have an angel on your shoulder (Keeping in mind that I’m agnostic about these things) But you really should get yourself checked out if the pain and stiffness persists.
January 2nd, 2011 at 7:33 am
I feel your pain. I was t-boned on the driver side last year and they had to cut me out from the passenger side. After 8 hours in the emergency room, they released me with only bruises. The impact made me black out and to this day, I still don’t know what happened. I look at pics of my car and wonder how I made it out alive.
January 2nd, 2011 at 7:43 am
Holy…! The fact that you weren’t killed/seriously injured in that accident is a miracle. That’s scary. VERY scary. I’ve always liked the little Mazda 3, but seeing the photo and reading your story really sells the car to me. I’m impressed at how well it protected you.
January 6th, 2011 at 3:38 am
Make sure you get checked from head to toe after a crash like that. You don’t want to end up with returning pains in your neck and/or back. Also be aware of sudden longer periods of migraine, especially if you haven’t suffered much from that earlier. (I can see others have given roughly the same advice, and it’s a really good advice)
And grats for chosing that car, seems like it served you very well considering the damage done to it.
On the lighter side: I love bear nuts. It’s one of the comics I keep on a sort of “check the updates” schedule. :)
January 6th, 2011 at 9:37 am
I’m so glad you’re ok!!! Mazdas are very nice cars, my mum drives one and it’s wonderful, has great gas mileage and as you can tell, is very safe despite its small size. I hope the dealership gives you a discount! It might help to say that the car saved your life. :) I hope you can also get free massage therapy for that, concussions suck (I’ve had 2). Also, if there is a pattern available for Sam’s awesome shark hat, I’d love to see it so I can make one of my own, because that is positively epic.
January 6th, 2011 at 4:18 pm
he looks cute white.
January 8th, 2011 at 5:41 pm
Damn. That’s some nasty crash damage. An accident you don’t remember? That’s pretty nuts. I hope you don’t end up with any nasty long-term crap. My sister got hit in the rear side panel and spun around in her old 89 Honda Accord back in 95… Her spine got really f-ed up and it hurt for years. She went to a chiropractor for a while after the accident.
I’m glad you’re ok now… ditto on what people say about getting checked out… Lets hope for some better luck with your replacement car… no more accidents!
After my first accident(so far my only one) I try to be more aware of those who don’t have the right of way… they don’t always think… Earlier this week I was at a red light… it went green and someone on the cross street ran the red light… I started to go and then another one from the same direction ran the red light and almost hit me. WTF!?
January 15th, 2011 at 11:16 pm
Wow, so glad to see that you are ok! My family was also involved in a serious accident this holiday season (Christmas Eve, even!) but everybody walked away! I suffered some cracked ribs and there are sprains and minor concussions and whiplash among us but, I’m just glad my family is safe. All in all it was the best gift we could have gotten, and truly a Christmas miracle that we all got to be together!
Again, so glad that you are alright! Thank God for good cars!
Absolutely loving this comic, by the way!!
December 11th, 2011 at 7:36 am
Yeah, sorry about your car. But I think all of us are glad you’re alright :)