A con artist frames me for crashing into their car. But then I have a con of my own.

As a bit of background, this was back in the 1990s. I'd recently been medically retired from

the military and was attending college in Texas. My wife was working in her chosen field

while I did my level best to decide what I wanted to do with the

rest of my life. Anyway, one day I left campus, going around the backside to avoid the traffic.

I was heading over to pick my wife up for lunch and ended up sitting behind another car at a stop sign.

The car in front of me was a brand new Chevy. One of their little gorgeous models, the actual

trade name escapes me at the moment. It was in candy apple red and being driven by a fairly

new blonde, also a little gorgeous model, whose name will also slip by unuttered. I sat an old

sailor in an old pickup, just listening to the radio and thinking about lunch, when

the Chevy drove into the intersection and then stopped.

I didn't think anything of it, so I hadn't done any more than put my hand on the gear

shift in preparation of pulling up.

When suddenly, with a suitable squeal of tire, the Chevy shot back at me.

I slapped the shift into reverse, but it was too late. The little

Chevy smashed into the front of my truck doing around 25 to 30 miles per hour. After a second,

I cut my engine, got out of the cab, and walked around to the front of my truck. The good news was

that I could see that I wasn't going to have to worry about that loose belt squeal

anymore. The bad news is that the front of my little pickup was pretty much totaled. Grill drove

back into radiator, water all over the pavement, headlights smashed, I bent down and noted that there

seemed to be oil leaking as well. With a sigh of total incomprehension, I walked further up to the

passenger door of the little red Chevy and its blonde driver. I was annoyed, but not enraged. I guess I

...