I had a minor - incredibly so - fender-bender this afternoon smack in the middle of Franklin St. It was entirely my fault, though, and we pulled off behind the Carolina Coffeeshop and called the cops and had them document it so my insurance could cover the repair to the other now slightly scraped car. She - the incredibly nice woman driving the other car - had called her mother because technically it was her car and I was talking to the mom as we were trying to decide whether to call the cops or just exchange information and have me pay for it when the mother asked what I would rather do. “I am happy either way,” I said, and I really was. We were happy to be unhurt, happy it wasn’t worse than it was, happy about the fact that a moment’s examination made it plain that it looked much worse than it really had been, just generally having about the best time one can possibly have and still engage one’s insurer.

“Well, it would be a big act of trust for me to take you at your word on paying for it,” she said to me.

“Yes, and you don’t know me from Adam. So I’m not going to try to influence you one way or the other.”

This is Chapel Hill: we have to talk about our feelings before we can take care of our little fender-benders. A part of me rolls its eyes and a part of me loves that.

“It says a lot that you would be that way,” the woman’s mother told me.

“Thank you,” I said, “But if we’re all happy either way then I’d rather call the police and have it documented just to make sure everything is taken care of.”

This is Durham: that happy hippie shit is nice but damned if I am getting suckered into paying for every ding she’s ever put on that car. A part of me rolls its eyes at that, too; and a part of me really likes it.

In other news, last Saturday The Boyf and I went to see Children of Men with Katastrophes, Mr. Pink Eyes, Pants Wilder, A-Diggity and a woman whose name I’ve forgotten because I am terrible with names but who is in turn a friend of A-Diggity’s ladyfriend.

Wow.

If you don’t cry, or at least tear up or get a lump in your throat or something indicating that you have been moved by the end of that movie, I’m not sure you’re really alive.

Here’s the thing, though:  we went to see it at The Lumina, which is in Southern Village, which on its very best day is somewhat bothersomely… planned.  It is not at all organic.  It is as inorganic as a collection of ceramic pigs.  It can be annoyingly fake and yet hating it for its preplanned falsehoods is itself an action born of annoyingly fake street cred of the local variety.  Suffice to say, my feelings about it are both complex and inane.

After seeing Children of Men, however, it wasn’t just annoyingly fake.

It was startling.

It was like walking onto the set of a television show.

For forty-five minutes after the movie let out I felt like I was going to burst into tears, not the silent cheek-washers of the quiet cinema but full-on sobs, a real face-squeezer, and then I’d plain snap and put a garbage can through a window of one of those delicate brick storefronts and then it would be on.