So You've Regained Consciousness...
Dear Pedestrian:
If you are reading this letter, that means I left it pinned to your clothes after having driven over you with my car. Hello! The important thing right now is to stay calm. You have in all probability lost a lot of blood. Getting excited will cause your heart to beat faster, pumping blood out of you at a vastly accelerated rate.
Taped to the bottom of this letter is a whistle, which I've included so that you may alert others to your need for immediate medical care. I ask, however, that you refrain from blowing on the whistle until you finish this letter.
If you are suffering from a head concussion or otherwise blacking out for extended periods of time, it is permissable to read this letter in short bursts. If this is the case, please return to the last paragraph you finished and reread it before continuing, so as not to interrupt the narrative flow.
If your wounds are severe enough that you are unable to read this letter on your own, please blow on the whistle and have someone read it to you. Do not allow them to call the police yet. Finish the letter first. You'll see where I'm going with this in a minute.
Perhaps you are wondering why I ignored the pedestrian crossing sign and drove over you at full speed with my car — you may even feel angry or betrayed. In truth, the reasons are so numerous that I couldn't say with any certainty in a form letter. Please refer to the blank space below for specific details.
Whenever I run over a pedestrian with my car I am careful to obscure my face with my hand, so that you are unable to identify me in the event that you flew up over the hood of my car and mashed yourself against my windshield. Similarly, to prevent you from reading my license plate as I sped away, I most likely reversed back onto you and sped off backwards before careening down a nearby sidestreet.
Despite these measures, no plan is foolproof; in the event that you are able to identify me, I ask you to let me make it worth your while before going to the authorities. I am between jobs right now, and so don't have access to any liquid assets. As an alternative, I invite you to take full advantage of my abundant connections in the grocery retail industry. Perhaps a palletload of Hamburger Helper is the key to helping you forget the events of the last half hour. Twenty boxes of Head and Shoulders could also be yours, at cost.
It is entirely possible, given statistical averages, that I have run over you with my car before. You'd really be surprised. I am unable to disclose names, but put forward as an example a twenty-something woman I've somehow had the bad fortune to run over some five times now, due to the increasing slowness with which she can cross the road after each hit-and-run. It's a dangerous cycle, and one that has made a certain young lady neck-deep in recalled cans of Chunky Beef Stew. Something to think about.
I'm sure you're eyeing that whistle by now, so I'll try to sum up as briefly as possible. Despite the opinion you might have of me right now, I actually have the greatest respect for human life. I put forward that while I could perhaps take a lesson in patience (or at least allow myself a more liberal time allotment to reach my appointments), you could also learn to fucking walk faster.
This is most likely impossible now, and the irony is not lost on me; but I invite you to tell your friends at the senior citizen's home, college dormitory, inner city slum or Arbee's staff breakroom (whichever applies) so that they might succeed where you have failed. Tell them that their safety lies not in the pedestrian crossing sign, but in carefully guaging the mood of any motorists rapidly losing patience while waiting for you to cross. With practice, one can become adept at understanding who might be in a bit more of a hurry, with maybe some far more important things to take care of, than yourself, and accede right of way accordingly.
If you've read this letter from start to finish, it should have taken approximately ten minutes to mouth the words (I'm assuming a low educational level for you given the circumstances). Experience in these matters have taught me that you've probably lost four to five pints of blood by now and may be having difficulty focusing on individual letters or coherent thought. That being the case, I leave you with my sincere wishes that you get better soon; have not identified me at all; will learn to walk faster, or at least school others on the results of your hubris; and this whistle.
