I’m sorry.

I have a 2005 VW Jetta, 5 cylinder engine, in platinum grey. This car has been to Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Jersey…and of course PA. Its carried my muskets to Nationals, my groceries home. I’ve never had so much as a scratch on this car. Until I moved to Pennsylvania. 

When I first moved to PA…I moved to a town that was full of twins, doubles and on street parking. And trouble…and I mean TROUBLE. The kind of trouble where I’d walk to the corner store with some kind of protection. Anyway, the streets were narrow enough & now you’ve got at least 2 cars per house parked on the street.  The first day we moved in, I parked directly in front of the house we were sharing with a friend. I was worried all night about my car…would someone come home drunk from the bar & hit it, would someone break in to it, etc. I was spoiled in NY…my parents had a driveway.

The next day I went to a job interview. When I got home someone parked where I was parked so I parked behind them.

Much to my surprise…my next door neighbors were deaf girls in their early 20s and they were moving out. My neighbors on the other side of me were a nice, very elderly couple.

My guy was upstairs moving furniture around while I was in the back of the house in the kitchen making spaghetti & meatballs for supper. From scratch. I wanted our second night in a strange new town, let alone new state, to be nice & relaxing after moving in the day before.

All of a sudden I hear a bang. I stop what I’m doing…yell from the kitchen ‘are you okay’ to my guy & he yelled back yes. I thought maybe he dropped something. I went back to what I was doing. Now I hear another bang…followed by someone pounding on my front door.

I looked down the hallway as my guy came running down the stairs…it was the little old lady from next door. She was frantic. The first thought I had was omg…her husband was shot. I ran to the door & let her in.

Thank goodness…that wasn’t the case…

She pointed next door and kept saying “your car!! Your car!!!”

Now I’m thinking my car was stolen…I braced myself and looked out over the porch and it was still there.

My deaf neighbors kept backing their moving van into my car trying to hop the curb in order to bring the back of the truck up to their door!!!!!

The whole block was outside shouting to these girls. The girls were taking the hand signals not as ‘STOP!!!’ but as ‘give it a lil more gas! You’ve almost got it!!’

There was my beautiful Jetta crying out to me: ‘Help me..please…I’ve been nothing but good to you’, as it kept getting rocked against the high curb.

They would pull forward…cut the wheel…slam on the gas in reverse and BAM!!! Holy Shit!!! How did they not feel this??? I don’t understand…they were deaf!! It wasn’t like they couldn’t feel resistance in the truck.

They finally stopped…the driver got out to see what was in the way…and then she saw my car.

Let me just say…she is lucky she was deaf. I could have flipped out, believe me I wanted to. But I told myself no. I called the cops. We worked things out. 

I no longer have pictures of the damage.  But the whole drivers side of the car had to be replaced. I nursed my car back to health. I apologized. It forgave me. I swore I would do everything I could to prevent any kind of scratch, nick, ding ever to happen. I promised it that when we bought a house, I’d make sure it have a garage for it to sleep in.

Four years later…I’m in my new house. I was distracted backing my car out of the garage. I cut the wheel a little too soon & this happened:

I’m sorry.