Yes, the driver stopped and as I was sitting there in the road, he came up to me and started chivvying me to get up and I told him to back off and not to touch me.
You see, there are a few things that were affecting me in terms of emotion and thought.
1. Feeling generally shaken.
2. Needing to check around me to make sure other cars weren't going to run me over. (Not a problem - another car stopped behind, parked at a slight angle with hazards on.)
3. Trying to assess myself for injuries before I moved. If I'd damaged my spine, for instance, moving could have been dangerous. My wrist, which is rather wonky after a previous break when falling was painful and I was trying to check out if I'd injured it or just annoyed it.
4. Others were getting involved and with my hearing, that means looking back and forth, trying to work out who's saying what, who's doing what.
5. Sadly, in the past, I've been on the wrong end of 'helper muggers'. They pretend to be helping whilst they rob you.
6. Psychologically I perceived the driver the way I would if a strange thuggish-looking man had barged past me and shoved me into the road. He might have misjudged it, thinking I'd jump out of the way, but it would still be aggression so I'd be wary.
7. The man who hit me might have been drunk, high on drugs, manic or whatever. Again, potentially still dangerous due to impaired judgement. (I don't assume he would be, but I'd want to assess him first.)
8. My groceries were smashed and he didn't give a toss. That to me was painful. He didn't know whether I could afford to replace them. About £15 worth of food ruined but for all he knew, it could have been twice that or more. For all he knew, it could have been my children's supper. To give you an idea of the level of impact, three apples were totally squashed and a load of almonds and brazils were reduced to powder and crumbs. I didn't land on them, that was the force of impact. There was hummus and juice from squashed fruit on the bags and on me.
The driver told someone else he would report it to the police. What he didn't do, though, was give me or the witnesses his details.
Someone called an ambulance. I said I didn't want or need an ambulance, I wanted police but nobody listened to me. The person calling the ambulance refused to cut the call until they'd passed my details onto the switchboard, by which time the driver had gone.
Someone kicked up such a fuss insisting on driving me home, with others nagging me to accept the offer, that I gave way, even though it was a very short walk along a couple of very familiar roads.
I felt horribly, horribly disempowered.
I wasn't going to report it to the police, remembering how not many years ago, I reported an assault by a woman on a bus who, seeing my disabled bus pass and the signs on my mobility aid, had physically assaulting me whilst shouting and swearing. "[Expletive] disabled...!" It was on camera (from more than one angle), the driver will have had to fill out a report at depot, and there were witnesses who'd helped me to safety. The police didn't even think it worth giving me a log number, much less investigating.
But others chivvied me so I did. I stayed in all day Thursday and Friday for the call I was told I'd get but didn't. Emotionally as opposed to logically, I felt like I'd been subjected to a curfew, like it was me that had committed the offence.
