twenty questions for modern children

K: "I'm thinking of something, can you find what it is in twenty questions?"

A: "Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?"

K: "Animal"

A: "Is it a real animal or an imaginary one?"

K: "Real"

A: "Is it bigger than a breadbox?"

K: "It's...um...how big is a breadbox?"

D: "She means, 'Is it bigger than a microwave?'"

K: "Oh, ok. Bigger than that."

more about my car

I spoke with insurance agents over the phone last week, and answered their questions about the accident (specifying that I was not an eyewitness, and was relaying what the police had told me, except when I was describing the condition of the car and the parking lot.) On Saturday, I received a rather suspiciously worded document from the insurance company, saying they had "my version" of the accident over the phone. However, they need me to make a formal report on the accident in their standard format, in order to process my claim. Unfortunately, I cannot report on the accident in their standard format. It's not just that I was not driving my car, but that nobody was driving my car. It was parked in a parking lot. How unusual is it for an unoccupied car to be damaged while parked in a driveway or parking lot? They really ought to have a form to accommodate the possibility.

In going over the official police report and trying to fill out the formal report, I noticed with some surprise that was no driver at all. A 3-car collision with no drivers. I wonder if the claim agent will read enough of the details, with enough attention, to believe it.

"Vehicle #1 operator stated that he parked his vehicle and steped out. He then walked away from his vehicle when it began to slide on ice down hill stricking vehicle #2 which in turn struck vehicle #3."

That's from the official police accident report. I went to the city Records Room a few days after the accident to buy a copy. They gave me two versions of the page with the Crash Narrative, which is a bit problematic because the other version is:

"Vehicle operator #1 stated that he parked his truck to step out. He then walked away when the vehicle began to slide on ice down the hill stricking parked vehicle #3 in turn contacted vehicle #3 which were both parked."

There are obvious similarities. In both versions, vehicle 1 slides downhill with no driver, and the writer cannot spell "striking." However, one version features a vehicle 2 getting squished, and the other doesn't mention it. The structure of both the police report and the insurance report tend to confuse numbering, because they require the writer to give vehicle information in sets of two. There is one page with owner/license/insurance information for the snowplow and my car, and another page with owner/license/insurance information for the snowplow and the white car. I can only begin to imagine the combinatorial mess of data exchange pairs that must follow dozens of cars piling up.