almost road-kill

I was driving down Sunset blvd in a brand new car pretending I was rich. It was a brand new Lincoln Navigator so I use the term "car" loosely. I guess it was more closely related to a shiny army tank. It was an environmental nightmare, but I was wearing my "think green!" T-shirt so I thought it cancelled each other out.
I was bulldozing down Sunset blvd in a brand new tank pretending I was rich. But actually I was taking the kids I tutor to tennis lessons. Turning onto Sepulveda following the parking lot of smoggy cars along the 405 with my "think green!" T-shirt slowly burning its scarlet logo into my guilty chest, I came up with a rhyming game to distract us. I would say a word and we would go around in a circle rhyming with it, no proper nouns, and no repeats. Peter was five years old so he was given a five made-up words allowance. Although Jeff hated this rule.
We were on round 4, rhyming with "cake" when I turned off of Sepulveda towards the tennis courts. Peter had just run out of his fifth made-up word so they were arguing over the word "shlake" when an enormous deer bolted out from the side of the road right in front of the car. I slammed on the brakes not knowing if this lumbering tank of a car could stop in time. It seemed to take forever to slow down. I kept thinking "I'm going to kill a deer in L.A. I am going to hit a deer in the streets of Los Angeles". The cars behind me were screeching and squealing, wrenching their cars left and right to avoid a pile up. Finally our tank halted and we slammed into the backs of our seats as this immense creature stopped right in front of the windshield. He turned his massive, handsome head. His nostrils flared, he lifted his antlers, four tiers high, gloatingly. We sat frozen, in awe of his beauty and power. This majestic beast from some mythical forest had entered our dirty, traffic ridden city and he seemed to stop time with his serene aristocracy.
He blinked once and ran straight up the hill disappearing in seconds. We rode the rest of the way in silence.