My 21st birthday was celebrated in a bar in Boston that my friends had rented out for the evening. We had a great time dancing, laughing, legally drinking vodka-cranberries, and wearing crowns that said “over the hill.”

Justin was kind enough to volunteer to be the designated driver that night, so after the bar closed, my friend and I hopped into Justin’s Honda Accord and we started to make our way through town to head home. We were cruising along through a green light, probably charmingly serenading Justin with a Kanye West hit, when suddenly another car ran their red light, flew into the intersection that we were currently occupying, and hit the front corner of our car.

Kanye was immediately forgotten as the car spun around and came to a stop in the middle of the intersection. After checking to make sure that we were all right (which we were), Justin pulled over to the curb and we all got out. The other car had spun out as well and had landed on the other side of the intersection. Justin pointed out that the other driver was probably just pulling himself together before he got out of the car to talk to us, so we chatted about how lucky we were to have escaped unscathed while we waited.

We were all watching the car as the driver started the engine, and we were still watching as he burned some serious rubber and went screaming down a side street, never to be seen or heard from again.

I’ll give it to him, none of us saw it coming.

Luckily another driver had been waiting at the same intersection and pulled over to see if we were okay. I was won over immediately by his sense of humor, which was on display via a t-shirt that read “Your boyfriend thinks I’m cute” and was even more in love with him when told us that he had seen everything and had even managed to get part of that rascal’s license plate. As it turns out, though the good Samaritan was as nice as they come and extremely eager to help, he didn’t have the photographic memory that we were hoping for and his tips didn’t pan out. But bless his heart for trying.

To add insult to injury, the front bumper of Justin’s car wasn’t as lucky as we were and was currently lying in the middle of the street. After considering our options for a few minutes, we grabbed the bumper, wedged it into the back seat, and called it a night.

Unfortunately, the situation didn’t get any prettier in the light of day:

And understandably, Justin was less than thrilled.

The moral of today’s story? Always get the license plate.

And always have some duct tape on hand just in case you need to reattach your bumper at 4am on a deserted city street.