Our garage is too small. The houses across the street (a different developer) have wide enough garages (8 panels wide for 2 cars). Ours is only 7 panels wide. We can barely squeeze in 2 cars, and my passengers have no room to get out once inside the garage. So it is with great care and ease that I slowly back out of the garage.
I was rushing around Thanksgiving morning because we had to leave in five minutes to pick up my parents and drive to Vallejo (an hour away in good traffic) when I spoke to the neighbor next door who suddenly wanted me to come over and pick up a cake that she had baked for us. She said it was still in the oven, but we could take one that she had baked earlier that was not as fresh (the definition of which was that it had come out of the oven well over 4 hours before). Personally, I thought that was plenty fresh. “Well come over and get it,” she says.
I walk over and pick it up with and try to chit chat a little to be friendly - “Oh this is my sister, she’s in from Vegas and this is my brother and we’re going over to my aunt’s house down the street.”
“Nice to meet all of you and wow, this cake looks wonderful, but I gotta go, we have to pick up my parents. Thanks so much. Happy Thankgiving.” Actually, I do like these people and wished I could have stayed a little longer, but I really was in a hurry and beginning to stress out about it.
I rush out and open the hatch to my car and put the cake in and run into the house to grab the salad for the Thanksgiving dinner and the Harry Potter book for my niece and put that in the back as well. MrMudPuppy disappears into the house to lock up and grab whatever.
I jump in the car and start it up and my cell phone rings. It’s my sister asking me when I’m leaving and am I picking up our parents. I’m trying to carry on a conversation with her while slowly backing out of the garage taking care not to scrape the side of the car against the wall.
And everything happens at once. My sister is saying something. The CD player is playing something. Ron is yelling something and I hear a noise. A noise like scraping. I step on the brake and MrMudPuppy is standing in front of my car with a horrified look on his face because I have left the back hatch open and it has scraped the top of the garage door frame.
Harper’s Index of Vehicle Info:
Current damage estimate: $1,100
Number of hours driver spent finding ways to blame Blockbuster Online for this Debacle: 3
Holiday of damage: Thanksgiving
Holiday of previous damage on previous Lexus: Driver’s birthday
It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that I am living proof of how dangerous it is to drive and talk on the cell phone at the same time. I have become that which I loathe and denegrate on a daily basis.
Now, all of my cars have been either damaged, totalled, or stolen only once each (with the exception of my Toyota truck which was stolen twice within a span of 24 hours). I’m hoping this means that the new car got it out of its system and it’s good to go for the rest of its life. Or mine. Whichever ends first.
