There are days.  And then there are days.  

The year was 1996.  I was seventeen.  And I had this car.  The most amazing beast of a thing you ever did see.  It was green.  And it was a boat.  And it was older than me.  My 1977 Buick LeSabre was the stuff of legend and I loved every inch of it.  I called her “Greenbean.”

Generally speaking, I was a good driver.  An overly cautious driver.  Responsible.

I should have seen it coming, but then hindsight is always 20/20.  

I stopped at the convenience store to fill up on gas and pick up a lazy summer afternoon snack box of Junior Mints.  After starting up the beastly engine and securing my seat belt, I kicked her into drive, gingerly easing out onto the adjacent highway, at the urging of a patiently courteous driver.  And into the oncoming path of a callously impatient driver.   Pulling to the side of the road and into a nearby parking lot, I get out to survey the damage.  And oh, great.  The other driver?  A guy I vaguely know from school.  

In those days, most of us (including me) did not have cell phones so I go inside the business next door to call my mother, who promptly calls the police and rushes right over.  No one is hurt.  His little muscle car is totaled.  My ferocious animal of a car is largely unscathed (whew!).  

The police arrive.  I get some kind of warning citation.  Mom goes back to work.  And after nearly an hour of this ordeal, I prepare to climb back into my lovely green car and then it dawned on me:   The Junior Mints.  What the heck happened to my Junior Mints???  It didn’t take long to discover the entire box or Junior Mints emptied, smashed, melted, and utterly destroyed on the driver’s side seat.  And it didn’t take much longer to realize this same terrible scene was duplicated all across the backside of my light-washed jeans. 

I can only assume this happened sometime during the point of impact.  And here I am walking around all over kingdom come along the busiest stretch in town, with what one would only assume is something other than chocolate appropriately smeared in the worst possible place.  

Perfect. 

I watched as all parties involved hastily drove off, vehemently screaming on the inside…  “I swear it’s only chocolate!!!”

And I wonder… does that cop still draw chuckles from his story of “the girl with the poo pants” over donuts and coffee with his comrades?  Am I the running joke at rookie training?  Does that kid from school tell his kids?


I think the moral of the story is pretty clear:  Junior Mints not only cause cavities, they cause accidents.   

All sorts of embarrassing accidents.