Helping the repair man pay his bills

By Staff
Leada Gore, Editor
I’d like to consider myself a good driver. I’d like to. And maybe I am a good driver. Maybe I’m just an unlucky driver.
For example, there was the time in high school when I turned a corner in a parking lot, lost control on some wet pavement and hit some cars. Notice the plurality of the word “cars.” There were five to be exact.
It’s hard to live something like that down.
Thankfully, the next 20 or so years were not as eventful. Someone hit me from behind at a stop light once but you can’t count that against me.
Then, in 2004, the streak began. It was the Christmas Eve after Greg and I were married. He was parked behind me in the driveway, something he should have realized was a mistake. I was in a hurry to back out and, wham!, I ran into the front of his car.
I will never forget the look on his face when I informed him I had hit his car. The total repair bill for both cars was about $1,500. Merry Christmas to all.
Surely I would have learned my lesson about backing out and paying attention. Apparently not.
This time, I did not hit Greg’s car. I hit the mailbox. It wasn’t too bad, just left a black mark on the back of my white car. It did, however, knock the paint off the mailbox. I didn’t tell Greg about this one, just waited until he noticed the strange coincidence of the mark on my car and the damage to the mailbox.
Repair cost? I didn’t worry about the back of my car. New paint for the mailbox was $10, so we came out OK on that one.
I learned my lesson, right? Wrong. I recently began parking my car in the garage. To my credit, I did warn Greg this was probably not a good idea.
On this particular morning, I got in the car and pressed the button on the remote control to open the garage door. Then, I used the remote to press the other button that’s designed to active the newly installed alarm system. This is what I thought I did. Apparently, what I actually did was press the button to lower the garage door.
Crunch.
The door went down right on top of my car. It knocked the little fin above the rear window off.
Oops.
After a call to Greg, who said “You did what?” I took the car to the repair shop.
The repair man looked at the car, popped the piece back on and it was good as new. The price? Nothing.
Maybe I get a discount as a repeat customer. They probably figure I will be back. And they are probably right.