There are few things in this world as warm and comfortable as the affection of a good dog. I've had the pleasure to pass the weekend sitting for a really loveable golden retriever. She's exactly what a golden should be: fuzzy, hyper, and dumb as rocks. But she loves EVERYONE (except the garbage man. I really don't know why she growels at him). She even picks up her leash in her mouth and looks at me imploringly when she wants to go for a walk. I thought that only happened in dog food commercials.

It's a good thing she's so lovey, because it was her wagging and slobbering that kept me from having a total emmotional breakdown on Thursday night after someone made a deliberate attempt on my life. I adore Dorothy Sayers (as regular readers know), and I would give almost anything to be as brilliant at Harriet Vane or Peter Wimsey, but after Thursday I've decided that I can definately live quite happily without people trying to kill me. It's every bit as unpleasant as I had imagined. Worse, really. Unlike Harriet or Peter though, my assailant didn't have any particular reason to want me, Chaucer's Bitch, dead. He was just an asshole who wanted to kill someone and I happened to be coveniently (or unconveniently, depending on your perspective) located. Would you like to know what happened?

I was riding my bicycle, wearing a helmet (which is covered with reflective daisies) and obeying all the traffic laws like the safety-dork I am. I was making a left turn. I looked behind me, signalled, and moved over to the left lane. There was a Jeep, stopped at a stop sign on the street onto which I was turning. He was signalling that he was turning left onto the street off of which I was turning. You with me so far? If you draw the diagram, you'll see quite quickly that our arcing paths would cross. I had the right of way. I began to turn, passing in front of him as i did so. He began to pull away from the stop sign before I was out of the way. At first I thought he was being oblivious and didn't see me. I looked over at him, and we made eye contact. At that point he gunned the accelerator and came straight for me. I couldn't pedal fast enough. I watched him come toward me and and screamed as I pumped for all I was worth. He underestimated the force the quadruceps of a rower in fear of her life can generate. He barely missed me as i went off the road.

I don't know who he was. Just some asshole driving a cobalt blue Jeep Wrangler. There were witnesses, but they didn't get the licence number. I was so shaken that by the time I had the presence of mind to look at his plate, all I could make out was the first letter ("A"), and then he was gone. It's funny, my first reaction after it happened wasn't fear or helplessness; it was total fucking Rage. I stood on the side of the road and screamed at him, though he was so far out of earshot by then the only people who heard me were the parents of the little leage baseball teams that were playing a game on the field by the intersection. It wasn't until I stopped shouting at the wind that my nerves finally quit and I broke down. I tried to keep riding (I was on my way to the drug store to pick up some more arthritis meds on my way to the gym to lift weights), but my knees were shaking too much. My knees have never shook before - I thought that only happened in Victorian novels - but they were really quaking. So I sat on the crossbar of my bike and cried.

To suffer an injustice when you have an opportunity for recourse or revenge later on is one thing. The knowledge that in the future your persecutor will get his makes the suffering more bearable by several orders of magnitude. I was enraged because I knew, and still know, that Blue Jeep Boy will never ever have to pay for what he tried to do to me. I'll never catch him. We did ring the police of course, but with only one letter of the plate it's unlikely they'll find him. I don't hate that I was almost deliberately run over; I hate that he got off completely scott free. I want satisfaction.

While I stew over it, I'm going to go out in the backyard and play tug of war with a happy, vapid dog and a squeaky toy.