ife Tamara Dyrud Schierkolk is a 1988 graduate of Middle River High School. This small-town girl is now a city-dweller living in the Twin Cities. She writes for several publications, hoping to inspire others to love their neighbors well because life is just better that way.
www.tamarajorell.com
The Crunch
The crunch! didn’t sound like $1,418.86.
It didn’t sound like much of anything at all–other than a bump into the snowbank in front of our house. I put the Toyota in reverse and drove off like I hadn’t just hit an iceberg on our lawn. But I figured it out later when I saw the drooping bumper and put two and two together. I’m quick that way.
The crunch happened sometime in March. On May 2, an auto body shop in St. Paul delivered the bleak news of the amount needed to mend my oopsy-daisy moment. And they also offered me the soonest available appointment: August 7. At least I could drive around in a dinged up auto all summer. There’s always a silver lining, I guess.
My cell phone rang on May 5, distracting me from thoughts of my car’s damage.
“I was just in an accident,” Olga said on the other end of the line. She explained another driver had drifted too far into her outer lane in a two-lane, left-turn situation in Bloomington. Seeing it coming, Dicka had honked several times, but no. The two cars made contact, the other scraping the left side of the Honda.
“What do I do?” she said. “The lady who hit me is here with me right now.”
“Be sure to get photos of her license plate, driver’s license, insurance information, and the damage.”
“She doesn’t have a driver’s license or insurance. She doesn’t speak English either.” While my brain flipped through options, my girl left our conversation to talk with the lady again. In a minute, she came back to me. “She just pulled up Google Translate.”
“And?” I said. “What did it say?” “‘It’s your fault’,” Olga said. “Oh, brother.” When Olga came home, I checked out the car. The foot-long scar only added to the old Honda’s patina. There’s always a silver lining, I guess.
On Monday, May 22, Thora set out for our mechanic’s shop to drop off her Jetta for an oil change. Husband followed in his Ford F150 to give her a ride home. Traffic was thick and slow as they navigated their vehicles westbound on 694. Husband zipped ahead, but cars slowed to a stop around Thora. As she sat in the gridlock in the right lane, a car came from the rear, blasting ahead on the right shoulder. A space loomed between Thora and the car behind her, but its driver gunned it to close the gap so Shoulder Speeder couldn’t steal the space. Bang!
“I just got rear-ended,”Thora said to Husband on the phone.
My man pulled onto the shoulder, which was clear now, and backed up to our girl’s Jetta. He hopped out, assessed the two cars, and pronounced them both unscathed. The offending driver apologized. Later, Thora described him as a young, construction worker-looking guy in a dirty shirt and work pants. And nice. She admitted she could’ve been warmer to him.
Late afternoon called for a trip back to the mechanic’s; the Jetta was done. Husband, the family’s faithful deliverer and fetcher of vehicles, drove the route for the second time that day. Thora rolled away from the shop in her car, but Husband backed out of the place’s lot and into another Ford F150. Thud!
Apparently, the thud was enough to sag the other guy’s bumper, and he wasn’t pleased about it. Husband apologized. The man couldn’t find his insurance card, but he later emailed Husband the information, along with his own apology for his attitude earlier. He even said his bumper didn’t seem too bad–he might have a plan to bend it back into place–and he’d keep us posted. There’s always a silver lining, I guess.
I’ve garnered a few takeaways from our month of May with its automotive woes. But they’re as bland as the retelling of our four vehicles’ fender bender stories, so I won’t bother you with it. What I can say is this: there’s always a silver lining, I guess.
