The Rollover Crash

Newsletter 2025-12-26

I didn’t hear shattering glass or crunching steel. I heard my daughter yelling.

“Dad!” Mae shouted from the stairs. “Mom says to go outside right now!”

That was a new one. I didn’t know why I was in trouble. I was minding my own business wrapped in a blanket on the couch. I had started up the Xbox, intending to play Red Dead Redemption II, but instead got distracted by Facebook Reels on my phone. I was watching them with my headphones in, the only person on the first floor of the house, when all hell broke loose.

I looked up at Mae, confused. I’ve made Lola mad once or twice—or a few thousand times—but she’s never ordered me to leave the house. She’s especially never done it from two floors away, and not by sending the kids to eject me.

Then Mae yelled something about a car that was going to back into Lola’s vehicle. My brain finally connected the dots. I needed to go outside to do traffic control lest we end up with another insurance claim. I rushed out into the cold winter night in my socks. I hoped I would get there in time to save the day.

Outside, I found chaos. From upstairs, Lola had heard what she thought was a trailer clattering or maybe a Dumpster slamming. She had looked down from our third floor attic bedroom and observed a car oddly perpendicular to our new (used) car, which was parked in front of our house. What Lola couldn’t see in the dark was that that perpendicular car was upside down. I stepped onto our porch within sixty seconds of the crash. My useless doorbell camera didn’t capture the collision, but it did timestamp my arrival on the scene. I appreciate that it thinks I’m the main character in all circumstances.

I saw a woman sitting on the curb between our car and van being comforted by a second woman, who I was about to learn was a construction worker with emergency response training staying at the AirBnb across the street. In front of her, there was an inverted gray sedan, completely blocking the road. It came to rest on its roof diagonally, with the bumper pointing skyward about a foot from Lola’s car. The brake lights were still on, which is what Lola saw from above. The helper woman was asking the woman on the curb if there was anyone else in the car. The woman on the curb said there wasn’t. I asked if someone had called 911. Helper Woman said the guy across the street had. He was also a construction worker and was staying in the other AirBnb unit. I had never met either of them before, but I had seen their vehicles on our block for months. He drove a huge, jacked-up pickup. Now it was jacked-up for a different reason. The driver had slammed into the back of Construction Man’s truck so hard that she flipped her own car and shoved his truck twelve feet. She also broke off the mirror on Helper Woman’s car for good measure. Now they were taking the lead in helping her. It was Hoosier hospitality, but by two people from out of state.

I didn’t know how either of them had gotten outside so fast. I also didn’t know how the driver had so swiftly escaped the overturned vehicle. Less than a minute had passed since the crash. There wasn’t a drop of blood on her. She appeared to be completely unharmed. I walked into the street and crouched to look inside the upside-down car to double check if there were other occupants. I noticed two things: The car was empty, and the ground was covered in broken glass. It occurred to me then that I was in my socks. I ran back into my house to get boots.

Helper Woman shouted after me that the driver needed blankets. The driver was dressed in pants and a sports bra, which was fine for sitting in a warm car but less than ideal for hanging out outside. It was the one request I was perfectly prepared to accommodate. We had blankets hanging over every window and door to deal with the recent cold snap. Our lack of insulation had saved the day. I grabbed the blanket covering the window on the front door and rushed back outside.

Lola appeared on the porch. According to the doorbell camera, she arrived within the same minute that everything above happened. In the moment, it seemed like she got there much later. Time was moving very weirdly that night. From inside the house, Mae asked if she should call 911. I said the guy across the street had already called. No one heard me, which was for the best. In a crisis, I’m the last one you should listen to. Lola told Mae to make what turned out to be the second call to emergency dispatch. Lola went back inside for a flashlight. We had three new super bright ones that I purchased after the power outage in a snow storm a few weeks ago. All these stories tie together. Between the blankets and the flashlights, it’s possible all of my recent minor disasters happened to prepare me for that night.

Exactly three minutes after I stepped outside, the first police officer arrived on the scene.