switch perspective story

I was sitting in my home office, writing. The home my family lived in at the time was located at a sharp bend in the road. Drivers had to slow down to take the curve, but just two hundred yards past our house the city road became a county highway and the speed limit jumped from 25 mph to 55 mph. Because of the curve and the lower speed limit, cars would slow down to a crawl in front of our house and then accelerate rapidly heading out of town. Or they’d race into town and brake quickly just in front of our house to make the curve. If it weren’t for that curve, the road in front of our home would have been in a very dangerous place.It was a warm spring afternoon and the lace curtains flapped rhythmically in the breeze. Suddenly I heard a sound that snapped me from work: a loud thud followed by a scream. The scream was not that of a person but rather an animal. Every animal, just like every person, has a unique voice, and I knew this voice well. It was our long-haired golden retriever, Ginger.

Normally we don’t think of dogs screaming. Barking, howling, whimpering—yes; but not screaming. Nonetheless, that’s exactly what Ginger was doing. She had been crossing the road in front of our house, and a vehicle had hit her. She lay in the road shrieking with pain not twenty feet outside my window. I shouted and ran through the living room and out the front door, followed by my daughter Lia. Lia was six years old at the time.As we approached Ginger, we could tell she was badly injured. She was using her front legs to try and stand, but her hind legs did not seem capable of helping. Over and over she yowled in pain. Neighbors poured from their homes to see what was causing the commotion. Lia stood frozen and just kept saying her name, “Ginger … Ginger …,” as the tears flowed down her cheeks and wet her shirt.I looked around for the driver who had hit Ginger but saw no one. Then I saw a truck towing a trailer headed out of town, cresting the hill, and accelerating well past 55 mph. Even though our dog lay there in agony and my daughter cried piteously, I was consumed with confronting the person who had hit Ginger. “How could anyone do this and just drive off?” I said angrily. “He had to slow down to come around the curve.… Surely he saw her, surely he knew what happened!”

I jumped into my car and fishtailed out of the driveway, leaving a plume of dust and gravel. Sixty, seventy-five, then eighty-three miles per hour along the uneven road, in pursuit of the person who had hit Lia’s dog and left without so much as facing us. I was going so fast on the uncertain surface that my car began to feel as if it were floating tenuously above the ground. In that moment, I calmed myself enough to realize that if I were killed while driving, it would be even harder on everyone than Ginger’s having been hurt. I slowed just enough to control my car as the distance between me and other driver narrowed.Having turned into his driveway, and not realizing I was chasing him, the driver stepped out of his truck in a torn shirt and dirty jeans. His greasy baseball cap, which sported a profane witticism, was pushed back on his sunburned forehead.

I skidded in behind him and jumped from my car screaming, “You hit my dog!” The man turned and looked at me quizzically as if I had spoken to him in a foreign language.

With the blood raging in my ears, I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly when he said, “I know I hit your dog.… What are you going to do about it?”

It took a moment for the shock of his comment to wear off. After regaining my connection with reality, I stammered, “Wh-what? What did you say?” He smiled as if correcting an errant child and then said again, slowly and deliberately, “I know I hit your dog.… What exactly are you going to do about it?”

I went blind with rage. In my mind I saw the image of Lia’s slumped shoulders in my rearview mirror as she stood sobbing over Ginger’s body writhing in pain.

I yelled, “Put up your hands.”

“What?” he asked, grinning sarcastically.

“Put up your hands,” I said again. “Defend yourself.… I’m going to kill you!”

A few moments ago, reason had kept me from killing myself while driving in a white-hot rage to find this guy. Now his dismissive and cavalier comment about having hurt, possibly mortally wounded, our beloved Ginger had vanquished all reason. I had never been in a fight in my adult life. I don’t believe in fighting. I wasn’t sure I knew how to fight. But I wanted to beat this man to death. I was insane with anger. I didn’t care if I ended up in prison.

“I ain’t gonna fight you,” he said. “And if you hit me, it’s assault, mister.” I stood there dumbfounded, my arms raised, my fists clenched hard as diamonds.

“Fight me!” I demanded. “No, sir,” he said through his remaining teeth. “I ain’t gonna do no such thing. And if you hit me, it’s assault.” He turned his back and lumbered slowly away. I stood shaking, anger poisoning my blood.

I don’t remember driving home. I don’t remember lifting Ginger up and taking her to the veterinarian’s office. I do remember the way she smelled the last time I held her and the way she whimpered softly as the vet’s needle ended her suffering. “How could a person do such a thing?” I asked, choking back bitter tears. Days later the man’s jagged smile still haunted me as I tried to sleep. His “I know I hit your dog, what are you going to do about it?” rang in my ears. I visualized exactly what I would have done to him had we fought. In my visions I was a superhero destroying an evil villain. Sometimes I imagined I had a baseball bat or other weapon and was hurting him; hurting him badly, hurting him as he had hurt me, Lia, and Ginger.

On the third night of unsuccessful attempts to sleep, I got up and began to write in my journal. After spilling out my grief, pain, and discontent for nearly an hour, I wrote something surprising: “Those who hurt are hurting.” Taking in my words as if they were from someone else, I said aloud “What?” Again my pen wrote, “Those who hurt are hurting.” I sat back brooding in my chair and listened to the crickets celebrating the spring night. “Those who hurt are hurting? What does that have to do with this guy?” As I thought more about it, I began to understand. A person who could so easily hurt a treasured family pet must not know the love of companion animals as we do. A person who can drive away while a young child folds into tears could not fully know the love of children. A man who refuses to apologize for spearing a family’s heart must have had his own heart speared many, many times. This man was the real victim in this story. Truly he had acted as a villain, but it came as a result of the depth of pain within him. I sat a long time letting this all sink in. Every time I began to feel angry with him and the pain he caused, I thought of the pain this man must live with on a daily basis. After a while, I noticed my breathing slowing down, my tension relaxing. I switched off the light, went to bed, and slept soundly.