Monday, June 06, 2005
(8:53 AM) | Brad:
Licensed to Kill
I used to be a very lucky person behind the wheel of a car. Friends whose precise driving I likened, for reasons I cannot recall, to that of a ninja valet, would allow me, one whose vision and precision have always been substantially less than perfect (or even adequate), to drive. Because of luck. Cars miraculously swerved out of the way of any danger I'd somehow managed to create; my car, for reasons that seemingly defied physics, would hurdle over medians and somehow land safely, leading to neither scratch nor broken bone; pedestrians were blessed with the gift of adrenaline when faced with my oncoming vehicle.And so things continued until two weeks ago when I drove my car into the wrong lane of traffic and was hit by a guy who I can only faithfully describe as 'bewildered'. Since then, due to a fault unrelated to the ensuing wreck, my car has broken down in a White Castle parking lot at midnight, crippled by a $900 repair. Since then, I've managed to drain two car batteries. Apparently, the headlight damaged by my hijinks on the wrong side of the road, in its constant effort to flip up (damn 'mid-80s Accords!), drained them of their will to live or give life to my car's inner workings. I didn't realize this was the cause until the guy at the body shop, whose laughable $1,500 repair estimate I rejected out of hand, pointed it out and removed the fuse for me. Prior to that, I was convinced it was just the car screaming for mercy. Since then, just yesterday, I've accidentally backed the car I'd rented during the repair mentioned above THROUGH my paper-thin garage door. No damage to the car, surprisingly, but about $500-$600 to the garage door. My first instinct was to plead ignorance to my landlord, and to loudly declare my intentions of vengeance on the vagrant. But, as you may expect, my neighbors were instinctively drawn to the sound of an automobile racing into their basement.
As a friend told me yesterday, it's as though I needed a replacement to the constant accrual of student-loan debt.
