"The Point of Impact" or Exploiting my own Misfortune

Please be advised: No one was hurt during the following “incident.”

Today I hit a concrete column with my van…wait… that doesn’t quite capture the magnitude of my stupidity. Today I blithely overlooked a stone pillar about ten feet tall and 8 feet around. I was pulling out of a spot in my building’s parking garage on my way to Et Vous Pres (a nearby coffee shop whose names means “Are you ready?”) Since I zone out on a regular basis, I often tell myself not to daydream when I’m driving, yet here I was thinking, “Hmmm… How would I describe the atmosphere of bagel hour today?”

For those of you who don’t know, Bagel hour is a weekly event in my department, where English graduate instructors bitch about their students while consuming coffee, donuts, and bagels. We’re like bellyaching cops without the lethal accessories.

Anyway, at the moment the thought crossed my mind—“wham!”—my van was comfortably nestled around a large block of concrete. The impact collapsed part of my driver’s side door and just nudged the side view mirror unit out of its socket. I spent a minute trying to pop the mirror back in before looking down to register the corner shaped dent running down the door. I was like that crazy kid in The Royal Tenenbaums: “and there’s another one.”

When I called the insurance company, each representative assured me that I shouldn’t be embarrassed. One kind lady even confessed her own collision with a stationary object. Being fussed over can be quite soothing. Sometimes. Then someone asked me if I had damaged the stone column, and I responded, “Well, I wish I could say, ‘you should have seen the other guy’, but I can’t.” In fact, he recycled my door like an aluminum can.

Just now, when I called Jen to inform her. She responded to my embarrassment by suggesting we fix it before anyone could know. And then, like a stone column, it hit me—the beauty of the blog: Yes, I wrapped my van around a column, but at least I can blog about it.