You can't say I don't have school spirit

ER is in town for the weekend, and I had an important errand to run yesterday. She came with me, and we were headed back to my apartment, where I was working from home. We were driving along on a three-lane highway in Dallas when I noticed a truck in front of me with a car flag on each window. Both flags were a gorgeous shade of crimson, but I wasn't quite sure they were OU flags.

For those of you who haven't realized the excitement, joy, frustration and obsession that is college football, it's a pretty big week for Sooner fans. Saturday, we'll be playing our biggest rival, those awful t.exas longh.orns. I've blogged about it a few times before, so if you've been hanging around awhile (or have ever lived in Oklahoma or Texas), you know how big of a deal it is.

Well, during the week of OU/t.exas, you see quite a bit more school spirit than usual. There are more car flags, more team shirts, and more trash talking than any other time during football season. Today, on my way home from work, I passed a leather furniture store that was having a "T.exas-OU weekend sale." Even Spr!nkles is getting in on the action.

So there's this unwritten rule that everyone knows that says if you come across anyone sporting memorabilia of YOUR team, you give them the associated hand gesture. If you're a Sooner, you give them the lon.ghorns down hand sign.

So when the flags on the truck in front of us fluttered just in the way we could see they were OU flags, ER and I got excited and knew what we had to do. Unfortunately, I was behind the truck, so he couldn't see the OU memorabilia on the back of my car. We had to pull up beside him to get his attention. Only the person in the middle lane was going too slow to allow that. Bummer.

The OU truck sped up and moved into the middle lane. Sweet!

I sped up to get alongside him, and ER and I prepared to show some school spirit. Only the OU truck moved into the right lane. "No!" I shouted, and I began honking the horn to get his attention. ER was rolling down the window, ready to wave and flash the lon.ghorn down sign.

The driver was staring straight ahead. "He's not even looking!" I said. It was disappointing. I directed my full attention back to the road ahead of us ...

... only it was a teeny bit late.

We had drifted a little into the middle lane. I had just realized my mistake when I heard my car make contact with the car in the middle lane.

Shit.

In that split second, I knew I had to get us back into our lane to avoid further contact, but I had to be careful not to overcorrect and throw us into the concrete barrier in the middle of the road. I handled that task fine.

I lost sight of the car we had hit, but I made my way over to the right side of the road, where the other car pulled up behind us. I waited until the right lane was empty to get out of my car and check on her. We had barely hit, so everyone was just shaken up. We decided to exit the highway and pull over into a parking lot on the access road.

When we got out of our cars in the safer area, I walked over to the woman's car. "I know you're not supposed to say this after a car accident, but I'm sorry. I feel so stupid."

The woman laughed. "It's OK. Are y'all in town for the game?"

"No!" I said pathetically. "I live here! I feel like such an idiot."

I was able to survey the damage. We really had barely hit.

To give you an idea, ER had bought a drink at Subway just minutes before the accident. They had been out of lids, so she didn't have one on her cup. She had drank maybe one sip out of her cup before she put it in my cupholder. Even through the wreck, not a drop of that drink spilled. Considering we were probably going 60 mph when the wreck happened, we were pretty lucky.

The woman's car looked fine. If you inspected it closely, you could see a tiny little mark (circled in yellow in the close-up) that must have been made by my rear view mirror. Other than that, nothing.

































And then there was my car.

















Eek.

Granted, I would much rather have it be MY car to sustain the majority of the damage, given the whole thing was my fault. I spent the whole rest of the day frustrated at myself for being such a dumbass. Geez.

I went to dinner at ER's parents' house that night. Her family, who's pretty much like my second family, just laughed. They've all got silly car accident stories like that. In fact, when ER told her mom the story of how the accident happened, her mom actually said it was kind of precious. (I told her she needed to see my car, and then she could tell me if she thought it was still precious.)

So basically everyone had a good laugh at me yesterday. And I totally deserved it.

Gah!

Now, to leave you with more pictures and some exciting, more responsible news, the important errand ER had come with me on was ORDERING MY WEDDING DRESS. I got all measured for it, and what's really cool is that my veil is free with my gown. Score! [*Note: The "sweetheart neckline" was just pinned here to give me an idea. It will look better when it's actually really altered. And when the dress is the right size, obviously.]











































I'm not one to spend a whole lot of money on one thing. ER has seen me panic for a few days after spending $100 on a blazer that fit me perfectly and I knew I'd wear for work someday. She's seen me go back and forth again and again on spending $60 on a pair of jeans. So she knew how hard it was going to be for me to throw down hundreds of dollars on one dress.

When it came time to make the transaction, I was fanning my face a bit, since it started feeling a little warmer in the dress shop. The woman helping me joked with me, saying, "Now, now, don't go and hyperventilate on me!"

I had to sign my name on a few different things, and the woman said, "All right, that's it! I'm gonna go get your packet now."

"I get a packet?" As the woman headed to the back room for a moment, I looked at ER and asked, "Does it have a paper bag in it?"

The woman came back to the front of the store with my packet. She turned toward the radio in the corner and turned on the wedding march. She picked up a small bottle of bubbles that looked like a champagne bottle. She began blowing bubbles at me and telling me congratulations. ER and I kind of laughed at the whole thing, but it was really sweet.

And then we headed toward my apartment and I got us in a stupid wreck.

When we were finally back at my place, I told ER this would give her some interesting material for her speech at the reception. I mean, how many people do you know who can say their love for their alma mater actually resulted in a car accident?