Stop Signs: The Troll of the Sign World

Story Sent in by Juan:

In college, I met Elsa. She lived locally, but I came from out of state, so she had a car handy whereas I didn't. For our first date, she offered to pick me up and drive us to the nearby town for dinner.

Not five minutes after she had picked me up, as she drove, she breezed right through a stop sign. There was a honk, a tire screech, and I saw a coupe slide into the back of Elsa's car, on her side. It was a low-speed impact, thankfully, but still a shock.

The first thing Elsa did was turn to me. "Did you see what happened?"

I replied, "Yeah. You went through the stop sign and—"

"Stop sign? There was no stop sign!"

I looked back, out my window. The driver of the coupe stepped out of his vehicle and came over to Elsa's side. He was a middle-aged man and seemed genuinely concerned. He asked us, "Are you okay?"

Elsa said, facing the steering wheel, "There was no stop sign."

I stepped out of the car, told the man that we were all right, asked him if he was okay, and looked behind us to see that there truly was a stop sign. Elsa was wholly at fault.

The man tried to talk to her, but all I could hear her say was, "There was no stop sign. There was no stop sign."

The man pulled out his phone, and I did my best to get through to Elsa until the police arrived. That's when Elsa became more animated.

"There may be a stop sign there now, but there wasn't one when I drove into the intersection, before."

The cop said, astutely, "Stop signs don't just appear out of nowhere."

"This one did!" Elsa protested, "This one wasn't there before! I swear to God!"

The cop took statements from me and from the other car driver. I essentially confirmed the coupe-driver's story, and the cop asked me twice if I thought Elsa fit to drive.

"I think so," was all I could reply. After the exchange of insurance information and the issuing of a summons to Elsa, we all climbed back into our respective cars.

Elsa was distraught, and she kept shooting the stop sign dirty looks. "It wasn't there before," she muttered, "It wasn't. I can hear it laughing at me. I hate it."

Instead of driving us to dinner, she drove me back to my place, which I hadn't expected, but it was pretty clear that poor Elsa wanted to be alone for the rest of the night.