Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Oops, I did it again!
I traded paint with another car today. This one was my fault. I was parked in front of the store. I had backed into my spot so perfectly and pictured myself pulling out so easily when I left. Except when I went to leave some cow had illegally parked her car so that I was boxed in. I didn't have enough room to even pull out of my spot. Well, I should say I thought I could just make it. Sigh...but I didn't.

I was watching closely as I tried to pull out and it looked like I was close without touching, but I did touch. I scraped the paint off of the back bumper of a Subaru. At first I was so sure I had made it I went up the street to my next stop. It wasn't till I came back to my car that I realized I now had some blue paint on the side of it. Uh oh. What was on my car rubbed right off. I went back to see what I had done to the other car. Basically, this is what I did...



I knew who the car belongs to. She's the secretary for the lawyer that works across the street. She always parks in front of the store. I went over and told her what I had done. I told her if she wanted to make a claim for insurance to just let me know. I told her I was sorry. She said "Well, at least you told me, the last person to mess up the car didn't say anything." She didn't even get up to have a look. She had been talking to the lawyer when I came in so I thought, "Great, this should be fun." But aside from feeling bad about "hurting" her car, my conscience was clear. I had done the right thing. If it went to insurance I would take my licks.

Of course I still worried all day about how long it was going to take her to make up her mind. I imagined her going home and her husband seeing it and picturing the car with a whole new bumper, courtesy of my insurance company.

None of that happened. She came in to see my husband and told him to tell me not to worry about it. She told him the story about how it was the first new car she had ever bought and four days after she bought it she had it parked at work. Someone backed a dumptruck into it and crushed the hood. She showed him the rust marks where it had been fixed. She also showed him the body damage on the side where the person hit her and didn't tell her. She said she wouldn't even fix the mark that I had made.

I'm sorry I marred her nice bumper. It makes me feel bad because I wasn't careless, I just didn't see as well as I thought I was seeing. But seriously, where she parks her car is terribly high traffic for cars pulling in and pulling out around her. She ought to park in a quieter area. M. gets annoyed because she parks straight in a place where people usually park on the diagonal (there are no lines).

I'll just happily take the grace that was handed to me today and try and be extra careful from now on. Oh, and that stupid cow that blocked me in can kiss my ass.
Written at 7:08 PM by Highlandgal.
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