drama finds me, even while I’m sleeping
Someone crashed into my car but I'm fine!
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Dear friend —
Two Fridays ago I woke up, got dressed, and walked to my car to find it wrecked.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
This story actually begins several days before that, when I started spending money on my car. It is this spending of money, I’m vaguely convinced, that led to its wreckage. If you don’t want your car wrecked, don’t spend money on it.
The problem was this: I’d bought my car on a whim while visiting Tucson in the summer of 2020. That’s a story in itself. In any case, the car was registered in Arizona and boasted Arizona plates all through my nomading around the country the last 14 months, during which time I continued to claim California residency.
Once I got to San Diego last month, I decided I better get this registration situation straightened out. Among other things, California law states you must register your car within 20 days of moving to the Golden State. Problem is, registering an out of state car in California is pretty complicated, requiring not only the filling out a bunch of forms but also a smog check and an in-person inspection of your vehicle by a DMV rep. The whole ordeal is painful enough that an entire industry has sprung up around taking care of the details for you — for a fee.
That’s how, on a random Wednesday afternoon, I ended up at a place called UMI Smog and Auto Registration. A half hour and roughly $500 bucks later, it was all done! I had a California registration for the year plus two new license plates!
But now I had a new problem: I had nowhere to stick the second license plate. Arizona only requires a rear plate, so my car had a smooth, anonymous front bumper that offered no way of attaching the front one required in California.
So on Thursday morning, I drove to the nearest Honda dealer. It would cost $200 or so, DCH Honda of Mission Valley told me, for the bracket to attach the front plate, plus labor.
What’s another $200 when I’ve already spent $500? Fine, I said — except DCH Honda didn’t have the part I needed in stock. “We’ll order it and it’ll be in tomorrow,” the parts guy said. “Can you come back then?”
“Ok,” I said grudgingly.
This whole ordeal was sapping up way too much of my time and energy. That night, I went to bed early, exhausted. I woke only briefly at midnight, when I heard screeching tires and a crunching sound, followed by a car alarm. Did someone crash into my parked car? I wondered, then thought, stop catastrophizing. I rolled over and fell back asleep.
The next morning I woke up early to drive to the dealer again — and discovered that yes, someone had indeed crashed into my parked car.
The front left side of my car had been hit so hard that the front right wheel was jolted up onto the sidewalk. On closer inspection, both front wheels looked totally out of whack, only cosmetically attached to the rest of the car. My left side mirror was shattered, its plastic bits strewn across the road. The hit and run driver had left no clues, save a mangled hubcap.
People get friendly when they see your car’s been fucked up. I was taking pictures of the damage when a woman driving by came to a halt — decisively enough that I thought maybe she’d seen who’d done it and was going to give me the details. But she just wanted to commiserate. “Oh no!” she said. “That sucks!” She continued emitting sympathetic noises in this vein, the two of us nodding understandingly at each other, until a car came up behind her and forced her forward.
“Ugh, that’s terrible,” a passing dogwalker said, shaking his head. “The same thing happened a few times to my friend on 32nd.”
“Yeah, I’m bummed” I said. “Wait, did you say a few times?”
“Yeah! It just kept happening to him!”
I tried to make friends with the dog but it was less interested in my plight and dragged its owner away. I called esurance. I called the police. I talked to more neighbors. Gloria, who lives in the house behind me, posted about the incident on Nextdoor in case someone had gotten the offender on camera. “The same thing happened to me once!” she exclaimed, then offered me the use of her Volvo: “It’s just sitting there,” she said.
A kid, maybe twelve, came up to ask excitedly if I thought the hit-and-run driver would be found.
“Um, no,” I said.
Officer Jordan from the San Diego Police Department arrived at the same time the insurance company called me back. He was a nice guy, chatting with esurance with me, giving them the case number and urging them to send a tow truck soon. Then he took a bunch of photos of my car with his tablet.
“Thank you so much!” I said as he got ready to leave. “This makes me feel better, even though I realize it’s unlikely we’ll find whoever did this.”
“No, we won’t,” Officer Jordan said, grinning without malice — he was just acknowledging what we both knew to be true with good humor. “And even if we did, we probably wouldn’t be able to get them to pay for your car. California law makes it hard to bring criminals to justice.”
For a second it seemed like he was going to keep going on this topic, but he caught himself — he knew he’d expressed a controversial opinion.
“Does this kind of thing happen a lot?” I asked.
“Oh yeah.” He nodded. “All the time.”
He took the mangled hubcap with him, perhaps as a souvenir.
DCH Honda called to let me know they now had the part to attach my front plate. “So about that,” I said. Eventually, a nice guy called Alex arrived with the tow truck. It took him a lot of sweat and more than half an hour just to get my car onto the truck bed — moving a car with barely attached front wheels is no easy task.
Alex took the car to California Auto Body, from where a woman named Veronica called then emailed to give me the repair estimate: $5,380.11. Fixing my car was going to take 10-15 working days — but during that time they’d also attach my front plate, free of charge!
I’m glad I have collision insurance.
I like a peaceful life. But somehow drama finds me, even while I’m sleeping. And some of the most time-consuming and costly dramas of this year have involved my car. Remember when it went missing in Brooklyn? That was only a few months ago! And I don’t even like driving!
If I got rid of my car, would my life become more peaceful — or more stressful due to the difficulties of getting to the places I want to go?
Does your car cause you drama too?
Love,
Siel
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It''s a sign. Give up the car, get a bicycle. Maybe even an electric bicycle. Better in every way - more healthy, better ecology, more adventure, and more fun. There public transit for long distance after all. There's even folding bikes one can smuggle onto a train in their own suitcase. Have fun!