The story of my first Charlotte crush

Last December, Realtor.com ranked the Charlotte, North Carolina housing market third-best positioned in America for growth in 2021. They weren’t wrong, as many newcomers have discovered about our sylvan patch of earth. The Queen City is lovely.

It’s amusing to recall my parents’ initial reaction when they found out I was moving here from Northern Virginia, where I’d grown up, two decades ago. Hearing the news, they reacted like prisoners who’d learned a fellow inmate planned an after-sundown dash for freedom.

Of course, they had never visited Charlotte, and their loving yet misplaced apprehension ran from spiritual (“are there enough other Catholics?”) to sartorial (“what if you need a new suit?”). I assured them both a cathedral and a Brooks Brothers were closer to my prospective home than their own. The place was known as “Banktown”, for goodness’ sake!

Given this personal history, I had no choice but to share with my parents the crushing details of an autumn 2001 fender-bender that happened my first year in town. On that evening I had stopped after work at SouthPark Mall, and was walking distractedly through the parking lot, back to my car.

Had I been paying closer attention, I’d have noticed two things. First, my driver-side door panel was freshly pancaked. Second, my side-view mirror simply was no more. Instead I struggled to open my door, now hopelessly out of alignment.

That’s when I heard it: “Dude, a monster truck drove over your car.” A man who’d witnessed the accident said these words to me. The look on his face was equal parts “that was awesome” and “man, I’m glad that’s not my car.”

The driver, a terrified teen, hadn’t actually fled. The misadventure had just happened, and he was circling with the flow of traffic, back to the scene of the flattening. Pretty decent composure, all things considered.

It wasn’t technically a monster truck, but rather a pickup with massively oversized tires. Nor did it summit my car as one answering to “Grave Digger”, “Widow Maker” or “Negative Interest Rate” might have done. The young motorist simply hadn’t straightened out his steering wheel when he’d parked next to me. Upon backing out, his enormous front-right tire rode up my door and over my erstwhile mirror.

These were distinctions without a difference when I telephoned my father later that evening. Could I have played it straight? Sure, but sometimes the universe sends you a clear signal, and you just have to go with it.

I described the accident exactly as the witness had put it to me, placing particular emphasis on the words “monster truck” in my retelling. There was a pause, followed by laughter on his end. I won’t soon forget what I heard him tell my mom after catching his breath: “Honey, it’s even worse than I feared!”

Of course, monster trucks don’t prowl about the streets of Charlotte, seeking the ruin of sedans. My dad simply had an overactive imagination, and reports of my misfortune fed into it. He’s visited many times since, and come to love this fair city as much as his son does.

So to those who are, as my father was at first, in the dark about the Queen City, I say this: Come and start a new life here, just as I did. You won’t regret it.

Please do straighten your wheel, though, whenever you park. Especially if you drive a monster truck.