Careen Abdul-Jabbar
Without warning
Out of nowhere
Like a bullet
Dream Theater - "A Nightmare to Remember" - Black Clouds and Silver Linings - 2009
Mutchie was a fuckin' trip. Behold some evidence of such:
At age 11 or so, I walked to her house after school to go out for seafood, get my porn restocked, and spend the night.
Her car was a little Ford Pinto, the infamous BBQer of occupants that helped boost consumer advocate Ralph Nader's popularity. It offered death and cremation, all in one convenient literal turnkey package.
I suspect it lacked power steering, for she turned very slowly with wee baby steps reminiscent of Tim Conway's great Oldest Man character. It was simply harrowing.
Twice I was her passenger. One of those rides was unexpectedly brief. She batted .500 at not wrecking. On the wreckless trip, she stank up a movie theater with leftover flounder. On the reckless trip, she stank up the road.
Hanging out with her was quite the adventure. Here be how the reckless trip unfolded:
Buckle Up, Child. Or, Not
As we saddled up to go chow down, I reached for the safety belt, but strap was locked in the reel. I was advised that it didn't work and was unnecessary anyhow.
She fired up the inline four-banger and very quickly, without looking at anything other than the inside rear view mirror, careened in reverse down her driveway and right into a Chevy parked on the other side of her street.
Analysis 
Her straight driveway was perpendicular to her 20' wide residential street, as driveways tend to be. Pic shows the driveway and now-tidy front yard over 40 years later.
About 100' stretched from the carport aside her house to the far end of the street.
Her chain link-fenced front yard was crazy-old-foreigner-lady overgrown and littered with birdbaths and various goofy debris, so visibility north was sketchy,
Between her house and the busiest street in the area were two other small houses and an apartment building. To the south was the second busiest street.
A couple blocks past that, on her street, were the junior high and high schools The Sue Chef, The Golden Psycho, and yours truly attended. Around the corner to the south, 450' away was an elementary school. The bus stop was 360' away to the north.
Between those last two points was Mutchie's house. And, chillingly, her driveway.
Summary
So, we have this trippy old lady kook, age...let's see...only about 66 (and not much taller than the dashboard) blindly careening backward down her driveway, across a sidewalk and the primary road for all northbound neighborhood K-12 student activity (among others) soon after school let out, and **BAM**, smacks right into a parked car in a vehicle notorious for fiery rear-end collision mushroom clouds with her young grandson in the passenger seat.
Hell, this might be the most insane thing on this whole site.
That's getting challenging to judge, though.
But Wait....There's MORE!
She started to just drive away, saying it was only a little bump!
Uh, negative - we gotta get out and have a look. No, we weren't burning rubber or nothin', but we weren't going slowly, either. Well, “she,” not “we” - I didn't fuckin' do nothin'.
Soon, the extremely nice chap who owned car #2 came out and things got surreal.
Mutchie insisted the wreck was his fault because he was parked in a no parking zone, repeatedly pointing at the sign. However, the parking restriction, temporary and bus-related, was 0700-0900h and 1400-1600h only.
It was 1615h.
The poor guy was pleading with her to understand, but it just wouldn't take. No matter how or how much he tried to explain, she just kept pointing at the sign and repeating, "NO PARKING!" Her skills of differentiation were off that day, apparently.
The whole thing was like something a crazy-ass, drunk-ass, outlaw-ass biker would do, only slower, in a Ford Pinto, and with a thick accent.
Contemplation
I've somehow fallen short of due realization of just how batshit loopy this was until, like, um, just now. I mean, literally now.
The menace she posed that day was remarkable, as shown by the amount of traffic and number of passing kids on foot and bike who rubbernecked the incident during the 20 minutes or so it lasted. Only dumb luck prevented a major collision or a kid getting crunched under that deathmobile as she played chicken with the world.
Hell, that car should have been flying a pirate flag, but with googly eyes like that charming pig atop this very page. I keep imagining her dragging a small, warm, smashed corpse to her back yard muttering, “I make bury now.”
How many little bones have found impromptu interment back there?
Aftermath
Both vehicles were damaged. She was found to be at fault and was, of course, baffled and indignant at the injustice she'd suffered, further confirming Mom's "The Eternal Victim" nickname for her.
I never witnessed nor heard of her driving again after that.
Questions
As a very dedicated and safe performance driver, I'm fascinated by this. And, this is my lunatic family, so there's that. Hard to not be interested.
Had I access to my estranged Flozzer family fuckheads, one of many, many things I'd learn more about would be Mutchie's driving history, for at that point she'd been in the USA for over 15 years.
Was that the way she had always exited her driveway and had simply been breathtakingly lucky, given that immediately in front of that driveway was the primary route to the bus stop and main road for thousands of walking, biking, and driving schoolkids (and others)?
Or, had she not been so lucky and much blood had stained her bumper and tires from misadventures past, somehow avoiding my awareness?
Did she, at the hands of the evolution that should come with age and experience, reason that butt-clencher I witnessed was a needed modification of her longtime driving methods?
Who knows?
Epilogue
Many times Mom recounted a story in which she, driving, with Mutchie her passenger, was stopped at a red light. The light turned green and Mutchie told her to go.
Problem was, a very old man remained in the crosswalk directly before them, proceeding slowly with the aid of a cane. This was before devices advising pedestrians of crossing time became common on traffic lights.
Mom, for some reason, rebuffed her alleged mother's demand and held her position, pointing out the fleshy obstacle before them. Mutchie, having none of that, reiterated her position, much to Mom's puzzlement and dismay. Mom's right foot, in charge of things, again declined to cooperate.
So, a Flozberk-style unilateral compromise came to pass - Mutchie suddenly reached over into the driver's territory and gave the horn a good honk, scaring the hell out of the poor senior citizen.
Mom often laughingly speculated that had she heeded Mutchie's instruction and bopped the throttle, the result would have been hysterical Mutchie shrieking about the poor, old, dear, old, sweet, old, dear, old, poor old man smacked by Mom's giant, green Ford LTD.
Interestingly, had things proceeded as the old lady suggested, a MURDER rap for Mom may have been the result.
Mutchie was a fuckin' trip. This has been evidence of such.