A couple weeks ago, I picked up my mom for her last pre-surgery visit. As we left her house and were walking to my car, she asked me why I parked in the street instead of the driveway. I told her I didn’t love backing out of her driveway – there are fences to contend with, a blind turn and the driveway is curved.
She called me last week to tell me that I should feel free to park in her driveway when I drop off/pick up the kids from school (the house was a block from the kids’ school parking is an issue when dropping them off). Then she says, “Oh, but you don’t like to back out” and I say, “Hey, it’s better than the time I backed IN and ended up on the landscaping”.
In typical mom fashion, she starts to solve my problem. She says, “Don’t worry if you drive on the rocks! (the front yard is all red rock)” And the more I say, “No, really – I’m fine just pulling in and backing out”, the more she solves the problem.
“Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll move the piece of driftwood that in the rocks, that way, you can just back right on to the rocks. Then you can just pull out without having to worry”. I mean, please. I’ll just pull in and back out. I didn’t mean to say I wasn’t ABLE to back out, just that if I can avoid it, I will. I half expect her to offer to have her house leveled and turned into a parking lot for my convenience.
So this morning is the first day of school. I say hello to my mom after I pull into her driveway. I take the kids to school. I ring her doorbell to say goodbye as I’m leaving. I say to Troy, “I feel really nervous because she knows I hate backing out and she’s standing right in front of me”. And not a second after I say that, I wreck that pig.
I am backing up and a car is waiting to let me out. I begin to back into traffic and I hit the fence with the front of my Suburban. The entire length of fence – real estate sign and all – comes down. The sign hits one of the cars that is parked in front of the house. I tell Troy that he has to get out and take care of this. I am so embarrassed. I am laughing and wishing I could die, both at the same time.
Of course, being the first day of school, the parent population is in full effect. One family walked by and said, “Wow someone was leaning on THAT fence”. None of us corrected him.
I left a note on the car whose tail light I busted out. Luckily, that’s all it was. Luckily, it’s a Honda and not a Mercedes. Hopefully, they’ll just let me pay for it. As for the damage to my car – well – luckily it’s a Chevrolet and not a Mercedes.
The next two hours I was either laughing at the absurdity, or sobbing uncontrollably – thinking how much I wish I’d done one thing differently so that I could have avoided this. I called my sister to tell her and she told me that she’d been watching the science channel, and that the good news is that there likely exists alternate universes in which none of this has happened.
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