A Head Start

Planning the future is fun. Eddie and I do it all the time. We live our day to day lives, all the while, listing the vacations we'll go on, the activities we'll complete, the places we'll eat, the houses we'll live in, and the cars we'll drive. All this will happen eventually, we say.

It's a good thing we do this.

This week, some idiot woman decided to drive her Honda Pilot into Eddie's stopped car on the Belt Parkway at about 30 MPH. She drove right into completely stopped traffic. She said she doesn't know how other than she wasn't paying attention.

He called me and told me while I was at work and said he was fine but wasn't sure about the car. I asked if I should come out to help him and he insisted no. So I kept teaching and texting him while he waited for the cops. The cops got there sooner than expected and then he was surprisingly able to drive home.

He said that the car was making loud noises, louder than usual from places other than where they usually come. It's an older car that typically makes noises, but those are regular noises that we've come to know the rhythm of. These noises were bad, bad noises. He also felt the back bumper hitting against the back tire. When we went and looked at it together to take pictures, we noticed that not only were the lights in the back cracked, but the wires and bulbs were dangling out from under.

When he went to open the trunk, the alarm started to go off. He's never used the alarm. He doesn't have a clicker for it. So it kept going and going. We looked at each other. We didn't have a way to shut it off other than figuring out how to disable it.Then we scratched that idea. Neither of us knows how the hell to disable a car alarm.

Actually, neither of us knows how to disable any kind of alarm.

Luckily, when he put the key in the lock on the driver's side door, the alarm stopped. I don't know if it was coincidence or if that's the way it works, but we haven't tried to open the trunk since.

So that brings us back to cars. I was toying with the idea of maybe buying a VW Bug. A bright yellow Bug. Or a Jetta. Or a car with a real third door. Instead, now, we may have to (a) forgo a new car to pay for repairs to his car, (b) find him a car while I keep my car, or (c) give him my car while I get the new one.

I think we'll draw straws. Winner gets to buy a bright yellow VW Bug that miraculously has a real third door.

Eddie, by the way, has no major injuries, but with each day, he's felt the onset of the impact all up and down his back and in his legs and just about everywhere else. Basically, he feels the way Tony Horton makes you feel after a workout, only ten times worse. So there are worse things than P 90 X aftermath.