A week before we got married, Craig and I bought a car. Aside from getting swindled by the salesman, having to replace the engine, and spending over a hundred dollars to get a new key, I have done more damage to this car than I have to any combination of the other cars I have ever driven. I wish I could really blame it on bad luck, on Craig distracting me, or the car itself, but I'm afraid that the only common factor in all the misadventures is me (except for the keys, Craig has a tendency to lose those). As far as damage to the body of the car, here is everything I've done.
First, I cracked the bumper a week after we got back from our honeymoon.
Fortunately, I was only driving about 2 mph or I probably would have damaged the entire hood. I was holding Craig's hand while we were driving down University Ave. in Provo and we came up on some traffic. I let my foot of the gas and gently pressed down on the brake, trying to come to a slow, easy stop. Realizing that I wasn't stopping quickly enough and not wanting to distract me further, Craig released my hand in a non-verbal expression of HURRY AND STOP WE'RE GOING TO CRASH!!! As a new married couple, we were still ironing out some communication kinks and instead of thinking "Oh, I need to stop" I thought, "Why did he let go of my hand? What did I do? We were talking so pleasantly, why doesn't he want to hold my hand anymore? WHY DID HE LET GO?" I was so worked up over the fact that he let go of my hand that I didn't even realize that I had hit the truck in front of us until the driver got out to see what happened. There was no damage to his truck and we decided not to report it to the insurance.
Second, I backed into a pole
When we first got to Washington and were looking for apartments, we went to a big apartment complex and toured one of the apartments available. I parked under a carport right next to the support pillar. Daniel was about two months old and a bit fussy so Craig stayed in the car with him while I went to check out the apartment. Afterwards, I was backing out of the space and very emphatically telling him something about the apartment when I realized that I wasn't moving anymore. I couldn't figure out what was going on and once again, I took me way too long to realize that I had backed into the pole (which ways way more sturdy than it looked, by the way). Luckily, Craig was an excellent voice of reason and directed me to pull forward, and helped me back out. I would have just asked him to drive, but the door was jammed and I was stuck. We managed to get home and fix the door, but the dent is still there and the wheel scrapes against the splashguard if you turn too sharply. Maybe one day we will manage to justify spending 2 grand on a car the I will most likely wreck again.
Last but most certainly not least, I crashed it.
It was really just a fender bender, but it seemed like quite the ordeal at the time. Everyone was perfectly fine, but I ripped of the entire back bumper of the other car, and crunched the front side of my car. Somewhere between the post accident jitters and not being able to find the registration, I lost the ability to stay calm. When the other woman started calling her family to tell them she'd be late, I realized that I couldn't even call my dear hubby who was gone for the month and started sobbing. She saw me crying and started crying too so when the police officer got back from putting our info into his computer, we were both in tears. Poor guy. The upside is that the woman's insurance paid to repair the damage to our car and included a free car wash. Our car is now cleaner that it has been since we bought it!
Hopefully this will be the last of the damage I do to our poor car. It probably won't be, but one can hope.
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