Manic: Forgetting that my son’s new car was parked behind hub’s truck! Can you guess what I’m about to tell you?! Also manic, and in my defense, is the way our garage is configured, on the side of the house. So when I back out, I have to carefully manuver around my husband’s large truck and then straighten out and proceed to back into the street and be on my way. Have you figured out, that on New Year’s Day, I did so, but forgot that my son’s dark new car was directly behind hub’s truck?! Yep, that is what I did…ugh! I sure hated telling my son and my husband that I just backed into my boy’s car! But I did and it happened, much to my dismay.
Managed: Accepting that it happened because I’m not used to my son’s car being there and that I’m human and I make mistakes. I also looked to this to see what lessons I learned from my unfortunate error. And I did learn a few.
So first of all, to answer the question that you are probably asking, how much damage did I do….not much to my son’s car, but my bumper took some damage, as you can see.
His car…
…my car
So with this little collision, I did some soul searching because I would have bet money in Vegas that I would have never backed into my son’s shiny new car! I wasn’t in a hurry and I hadn’t had one drop of New Years Day wine. I simply was doing my usual thing of very carefully backing up and around hub’s tuck and once I “thought” that I was all clear, I started to step on it and then I felt a crunch. At first, I questioned what the heck was in the driveway and then I remembered my son’s car! My stomach felt sick and I sure hated going inside to tell them about it. Here are my lessons learned…
*They were so nice and understanding and they knew just how bad I felt. This lesson is to remind myself that I am human and to be that much more understanding in the future when one of them has to come and tell me about a mistake that they have made.
*My son did ask me how this happened since my car has both a back-up camera and sensors. Good question! So I thought that one through. My sensors always beep right when I’m edging around my husband’s back bumper so I thought it was the usual beeping. Sure wish I would have realized that it wasn’t! One thing my hubs tells me that he doesn’t like about back-up cameras is that it results in us not looking over our shoulders as much. This proved to be true on this dark night and I sure wish I would have considered that tendency when he first mentioned it to me last year. Lesson learned here is to be careful and alert, even when you are performing a task that you do daily.
*Be grateful. This one is tougher to learn because I was so mad at myself and I didn’t like that this happened on New Year’s Day when all is supposed to be a fresh start! I had to choose to be grateful that no one was hurt, that cars can be fixed (although we are paying ourselves because I don’t want to increase our insurance rates) and that we can afford to have the cars fixed.
So this is my official first dumb “move” (literally!) of 2014. I know there will be more mistakes made, but I will sure try to be careful every day to avoid them! To those of you I told, thank you for making me feel better by telling me your own driveway collision stories. I guess this is more common than I thought and this must be what keeps body work shops in business!
And to my sweet Mom who quickly responded with “I don’t know how you get your car out so perfectly every day. Every time I visit I wonder that when I look at how your driveway and garage is constructed.” Thanks Mom….you made me feel better!
Time to go get in my rental car to get to my next thing. Car #1 is being fixed right now. My sweet son insisted that we get mine fixed first. He told me it was normal for a teenager’s car to have a scratch or two and he felt bad for me that my car (that I am SO careful with) took so much damage. Love my kid!
Here’s to 2014 and learning from my mistakes….and hopefully not having too many to learn from. Time will tell!
Oh don’t feel bad one time I forgot that my son’s car was parked on the side of our driveway where no car is ever parked. As I backed out and realized his car was there I maneuvered my car to miss his car miscalculated and hit the garage and ripped off my mirror. Found out later it would have been much cheaper to have hit it his car. My mirror was sooo expensive to repair. It happens to us all.
That is crazy that the mirror cost more! Thanks for sharing your story. You make me feel better and it does take some adjusting to having additional cars in the driveway all of a sudden!