Yesterday, my car was involved in an accident. Sort of. It was parked on the street in front of the house at the front end of a series of three vehicles. Someone managed to drive their car into the back rear corner of the truck at the back end of that line. They did a serious bit of damage to their own car. The truck, at least from what I could see from inside the house, appeared to be virtually unscathed. But the force of the collision seemed to push it forward a notch into the car that was parked directly behind mine . . . which, in turn, was pushed forward into my rear bumper. No one was in my car at the time. Neither Margaret nor I talked with the police officers who showed up to handle the accident. And if there was any real damage to my car, it’s the sort of damage that only shows up much later when one discovers that one’s rear end alignment is slightly out of whack.
Today, I received a phone call from City Chiropractors. The woman on the other end of the line asked for me by name. She said that I’d been involved in an accident yesterday and wanted to know if I needed their services. I said (in effect), “What the fuck?”
As far as I can tell, the best explanation so far (if we want to assume that Minneapolis’ Finest aren’t getting kickbacks from selling information to local businesses, anyway) is that the officer of record on the scene ran my license plate number in the course of filing his/her report . . . and then mentioned me by name in said report. Which meant that my name showed up in the public record of the accident . . . and that trolling lawyers and chiropractors could then call me at home the next day to see if I wanted to avail myself of their services.
You can find a brief explanation of “Rerun Sunday” here.
The post above originally appeared on 17 Jan 2008.