I saw the blue car coming towards us but my best friend, Farae (pronounced Fuh-ray), didn’t when she turned left on Lockland Avenue. It all happened in slow motion, one day as we left the Catholic high school where we were students. I couldn’t formulate the words fast enough to warn her to stop. And then we collided.

We came through the crash unscathed, but the driver of the other vehicle claimed she did not. Two officers from the Winston-Salem Police Department, one white and the other black, came to the scene of the accident. They recorded our statements, retrieved licenses and registrations from both parties and we stood by, answering questions as they completed their accident reports.

Because I was a passenger in one of the cars involved in the accident, I had to be identified and included on the accident report as well. I looked over the black officer’s shoulder as he wrote down my name, age and address. I wasn’t being nosey. My last name is frequently misspelled so I wanted to make sure he recorded it correctly. That’s when I noticed he had written down “W” in the box labeled “Race.”

“Excuse me officer, that should be a B – for black,” I told him, as I pointed to the Race box.

“Oh, okay,” he replied.

He didn’t skip a beat or look up at me with that confused, inquisitive look that a lot of people give me when I correct them or tell them that I’m black.

My best friend and I exchanged a quick glance, half-scared and half-tickled that I’d just corrected a police officer.

Even though that accident report would never be published in a newspaper or hung from a skyscraper for all to see, I still wanted it to be accurate.