I've just come home from quite possibly the scariest and most horrible ordeal I've ever been through.

There I was, minding my own business, coming home from London Drugs with my weekly haul of CDRs. I was just crossing the street in one of those crosswalks with the wide white bands, not to mention in a school zone, when some dumbass -- probably yakking away on his mobile phone -- decided to hit me with his Civic, rather than yielding at a crosswalk. Now, the speed limit in this school zone was 30KPH, but I could easily tell that this guy was going twice that. It's not like I didn't see him coming -- I just expected him to yield at the crosswalk like he was supposed to.

Anyways, I had barely enough time to react as this guy comes crashing into me at pelvis level. Fortunately, I was able to get my ass onto his hood in hopes of riding the windshield and sustaining minimal injury. Unfortunately, his windshield happened to have a very shallow slope, so instead of sitting against it, I hit it with the base of my extravertebrate spine (this means that I have one more vertebra than the majority of the population and am twice as likely to get a spine compression), slid up the glass and flipped over the car, landing hard on the concrete behind. Ow.

I was unconscious for as many as thirty seconds, I'm not entirely sure how long, but when I woke up, the first thing I did was cough up a mouthful of blood. Fortunately, the guy didn't drive away -- he'd parked his car on the side of the road and appeared to be surveying the damage to his windshield. Surrounding me was a crowd of lawyers, shoving cards in my face, and an off-duty nurse, trying in vain to ward them off so I had room to breathe.

The next thing I did was try to sit up, but a sharp pain in my back -- that spine thing I was talking about -- made this very difficult. The nurse told me to try not to move and started to examine me. The Civic guy come sauntering over, and instead of apologizing -- get this -- he tells me how much I owe him for the windshield!

I'm thinking: Let me get this straight, jackass: you hit me with your damn car because you were speeding in a school zone and failed to yield at a crosswalk, resulting in possible spinal injury. I might have internal bleeding from taking a bumper in the kidney, and possible brain damage as well. What's more, you've broken my two hundred dollar CD player (half of which happens to be laying in the gutter across the street), not to mention my thirty dollars worth of CDRs. And now you want me to pay for your bloody (literally) windshield. I didn't know whether to spit in his face or to cry with despair for whatever is left of intelligence on Earth.

Fortunately, the lawyers, nurse, and some guy walking his dog came to my aid and were practically screaming in his face about how much of a dumbass he was. A few seconds later, an ambulance arrived, but at this point I was able to sit up without too much trouble. Nonetheless, the paramedics insisted on taking me to the hospital. Before we left, I got the guy's license plate number, trying very hard not to scream profanities at him. Fortunately, once I got to the hospital, no-one else had decided to get hurt at that time, so I was at the front of the queue. I didn't have internal bleeding (thank God), so they discharged me. However, my back is still in considerable pain, so the doc said that if it feels worse in the morning (which I hope it doesn't), they'll X-ray me and see if I need surgery.

Now, I admit I took all the lawyers' cards; I don't think my regular corporate lawyer does accident claims, but I'm still contemplating whether or not I should sue the guy. I estimate that I have the money to carry out a such a lawsuit, although I'd normally just file a police report and ask the guy to be nice and pay for the CD player. However, he's still adamant that I should pay for his windshield, six small chunks of which, by the way, buried themselves in my left arm and had to be removed with tweezers. The most annoying part is that neither of my parents get home until nine, and I have no way of contacting them because my dad's mobile phone is broken and my mum is in Halifax.

So, what do I do? Should I go ahead and sue the guy? Or should I just let the whole thing go? Help me out here.