Smashed

People, do I seem unlucky to you? Misadventure-prone?

I am having a hard time looking at this objectively. How common is it to file two police reports (and, as long as we're at it, ride with an officer to the ER) within six months?

This morning when I headed out to my car, which I had parked, as usual, in front of my house when I got home Sunday night--despite being sideswiped there last winter (residents' cars parked in the two spots behind the building have been broken into twice in the past couple of years, however, so I still favor the street)--I noticed that the car in front of me seemed to have squeezed into quite a tight space, leaving little room between us. The next thing I noticed, as I got closer, were pieces of plastic on the ground behind my car. Then I realized that the pieces were my car.

A gaping chunk had been torn from my back bumper, and the Bruise appeared to have been jolted violently forward to where it now rested, skewed, mere inches from the car in front of it. Worse, closer inspection revealed that my bumper had in fact been driven into that of the Honda in front of me, cracking both of our bumpers (that of the latter clearly the nicer of the two) and mangling my license plate. Further evidence of the violence of the collision was visible inside the car: coins from my change holder were everywhere, and my phone charger had flown onto the floor. Perhaps weirdly, it was those little things that made me saddest--and the most relieved not to have been in the car during the impact.

The most likely scenario is that sometime during the night, between the time my neighbors got in last evening and I headed out to my car this morning, the person parked on the street behind me, almost certainly blind drunk, rammed into me on his exit from the curb. From the extent of the damage, he appears to have taken a running start, although I'm still baffled as to how anyone could gain any substantial speed in a spot that small. Based on another report filed by a neighbor who witnessed the event at about 7:30 this morning, the driver then appears to have headed south and smashed into another car as he careened around the corner onto 27th.

It's frustrating, to say the least, to yet again be the victim of crime for which I have no recourse--especially as I'm still recovering from the last one (my replacement bike helmet is in the mail, and just last week I purchased a pair of replacement PowerGrips). And yet, there really are things for which to be thankful. For one, the Bruise was never a great beauty, so the aesthetic damage isn't as egregious as it might have been. For another, I can still open my trunk and all my doors. No head- or taillights were broken, and the damage was on the opposite side of my new(ish) muffler. The bumpers appear to be the only damage.

According to the officer, the witness to the corner incident said the perpetrator was in a black Ford. Naturally I'm hoping I'll see it around and be able to exact retribution--not just for my and my neighbor's mangled bumpers, but so that justice for the (really, unforgivable) crime of driving intoxicated can be served--but I realize it's about as likely as recovering my beloved Trek (for which I still can't help but look, everywhere I go). Days like this make one want to believe in karma.

Or at least... (somebody stop me!)... car-ma.