Are there any grammer errors in this paragraph?
Half a second was all it took for the day to turn into a disaster. I
was on my way to school last week, driving my black '89 Camaro. The
car was nothing special, but I had just bought it last year and spent
many free days working on it and it was starting to look really sharp.
Everything was going wrong on that day, my alarm hadn't gone off and
my printer wouldn?t work. I was going to be late for classes. I might
have taken my eyes off the road for half a second, like I say, a
fraction of a second in which I could just as well have been looking
into the rear-view mirror. When my eyes flicked back to the road,
there was a car in front of me. I had no time to hit the brakes. None.
I could only watch with open eyes and an abruptly stiffened back as
the nose of my '89 Camaro plunged through a sheet of expensive German
steel. It wasn't loud, not nearly as loud as you expect a frontal
collision to be. It was like the sound of a half-full milk carton
dropping to a concrete floor, or maybe ten of them dropping at once.
It was over almost before it began. There I was, standing on the
street, mourning over my Camaro while the other guy surveyed his
damage. My '89 Camaro looked like it had taken a broadside from a
battleship. My headlights were shattered, the bumper had split in
half, and my long black hood was crumpled up like a strip of tin foil.
The other driver started yelling ?I can?t believe you did this to my
car!? I tried to figure out how this happened, the light was green,
no, maybe the light was green, I couldn?t be sure. My heart sank as he
flipped out his phone and started to call the police. I took out my
insurance booklet and started filling out the accident slips in
duplicate. I was too nervous to think straight. I knew that you should
never admit guilt in an accident, and really there wasn?t much to say,
so I just concentrated on recording everything properly: license
plates, date and time, street intersection. When I was done, the cop
had arrived and was interviewing the other driver. The officer seemed
friendly and he would find out the facts of the matter, I felt,
whatever the facts were. When he came over and asked my papers and my
side of the story, I almost flinched. But I told him everything, about
glancing over to check the time while I was driving through the
intersection. He listened patiently and nodded. "Was the light green?"
he finally asked. I nodded. That didn't seem to be enough. I added, "I
think so." "You think so?" he said gently, shaking his head. "You
think?" But he turned away without further questions. He walked across
the road and then I saw an older woman, with a small Jack Russell
Terrier at the end of a leash, who was standing on the corner. She
must have been standing there all this time and witnessed the
carnage?ugh collision. She pointed at me and then over at the other
driver. The cop talked to her briefly, taking notes, then handed over
his notepad for her to sign. He came back and stood in front of my
broken Camaro, giving me a hard look while slapping a ticket book
against his thigh. I?m screwed, I thought. My insurance will double.
No, triple. Forget about fixing the car. I'll have to sell it and get
a scooter. The cop spun on his heel and faced the other guy. I could
barely make out the words as the officer said to him; "I'm giving you
a ticket, this gentleman" -- pointing over his shoulder at me -- "had
a green light. You sped through the red." Saved, damn it. Saved. It
was all his fault. Although I lost my car, because I had insurance,
and I estimated the Camaro?s value at double what I paid for it, I can
now buy the Z28 of my dreams. My bad day turned out to be not so bad,
thanks to that witness. |
