BAD CARMA

As you may have already read, my car was hit by an old man driving a van a few weeks ago. Sucked. The bastard then decided to park his van right across the street - still bearing my paint on its side. Police were of little assistance because no one had witnessed the impact. And the insurance company has been slow to pursue an investigation because my $1,000 deductible covered most of the damage. I left a letter on the widshield of the van in an effort to coax the driver into fessing up, but to date have enjoyed no such luck. I decided I was just going to have to chalk it up to bad "carma."

And then the improbable happened.

Geri and I walked down the steps of her apartment and out onto the front stoop Christmas Eve day. On the concrete there, next to a dirty door mat, was a tiny sliver of gray plastic. I noticed it, but thought little of it until I stepped down the second set of stairs and opened the front gate facing Damen Ave. On the sidewalk outside the gate were strewn more plastic bits and pieces, all shimmering gray and metallic in the mid-morning sunshine. What the fuck is all this crap, I thought.

My eyes lifted up and I noticed that the car in front of me was missing its driver side side-view mirror. Upon second look, that car was my car. I walked into the street and looked at the driver's side. I had been hit again - the victim of a second hit-and-run accident in 11 days! This time, the driver of the other vehicle had been silver, and by the look of the damage, had been traveling at a pretty high rate of speed as it caromed out of control and into my poor once-new Passat. Looking up and down the block, there were pieces of glass, metal, and plastic everywhere. The mirror had completely shattered upon impact, sending car parts tens of feet in every direction...a tiny plastic slivers had made it all the way up the steps of neighboring condos.

Talk about bad carma.

I called my insurance company to report my second hit-and-run claim in 11 days. They asked the usual battery of questions, surely suspicious of my routine and activities. How does something like this happen twice in so short a period of time? The bad news only got worse. My $1000 deductible for the first collision did not apply to the second one. They were separate claims, and I would have to pay $1000 out of pocket for each of them before the insurance company would cover anything.

Two grand. Gone in the blink of an eye. Merry fucking Christmas. But I decided I would not let it ruin my holiday. I continued to shop and spend as though I still had all that money in the bank, fully confident that the universe would compensate me for my trouble in 2007.

I've also been parallel parking my "loaner" with two tires up on the curb to be on the safe side.