This week's ongoing saga involves Nick, who is counting down his last two weeks before he can come home for the summer.
On Sunday he spent the day at Lake Sommerville with, at least according to the Facebook pictures, a groups of friends whose X chromosomes outnumbered the Ys by double digits. Perhaps this was partly to blame for what happened next.
Today, while I was on the phone with him, Rob from work rings in and I tell him I'll have to call him right back. When I do, I mention I'd been on the phone with Nick who was learning all of the delights of car insurance claims. I start the story with, "well, he was at the lake...." and Rob reminds me that we must take all things in perspective, since his mind immediately jumped to a scene such as this:
Thankfully, it was nothing of the sort.
To set the scene, Nick and his friend Rodney are parked in spaces next to each other at the lake, but with each car pointing the opposite direction, so that the two drivers' doors face one another. Nick has opened his door to allow the "third door" to be accessed into the miniscule backseat of the Saturn for someone else to hop in but then proceeds to begin rolling in reverse before his door is fully shut. Unbeknownst to him, Rodney has opened his car door, hopped in, but not closed it. Imagine the slo-mo scene in which both doors interlock and hyperextend one another's hinges, cracking the fender panels, as Nick panics to find the brake.
So.
Rodney's door will no longer shut.
Nick's door will shut, but, as they discover on the ride home, randomly pops open while hitting bumps on the road.
It's Sunday night, and they call one tow truck who learns they are "out of town" and says no. (???)
So Rodney has the guys in the back seat of his car hold the door shut all the way back to the dorm at Blinn.
Nick spends the night stewing, berating himself for being so stupid, and imagines just getting both of their cars fixed "out of pocket." He wakes up in the morning infinitely wiser and calls his mom.
He texts me the photos of the cars.
I take one look, immediately call him back, and say, "We have to call the insurance company."
Now, Bob is out of town. Bob's out-of-town crises are legendary. The first work trip he ever went on, our dog died in the night. That was the worst one. If you'll recall, this time last year, he was out of town and I had what can only be described as a post-operative nervous breakdown (AKA, the Friday from Hell, in case you want to relive it.) It never fails. Bob is out of town, something is going to go wrong that he will feel like he has to fix and can't fix and is powerless to help, blah, blah, blah.
So I go into super-Mom mode, organize the details, file the claim online, and don't mention it to Bob until late that night when there is nothing more that could be, needed to be, or might even hope to have been done.
When Nick saw the body shop bill estimates today for both his and Rodney's cars, he finally understood the "we have to call the insurance company" comment.
Working with vehicles that are decidedly more expensive to repair that the two in this case, I was pleasantly surprised that their combined estimates came only to 3K, and that's with entirely replacing Rodney's door.
The time I hit the priest (no, really, that's not the set-up for a joke. I for real and for true rear-ended a priest in his shiny, brand-new-as-in-still-had-paper-plates Cadillac a decade ago) the bumper job alone ran over 5K.
So, we'll count our blessings and remind ourselves that this is what insurance is for, that no one was hurt, that if Nick was going to have an accident, this is the one we would want for him to have to learn from. And we look at that lake picture and manage to laugh.
On Sunday he spent the day at Lake Sommerville with, at least according to the Facebook pictures, a groups of friends whose X chromosomes outnumbered the Ys by double digits. Perhaps this was partly to blame for what happened next.
Today, while I was on the phone with him, Rob from work rings in and I tell him I'll have to call him right back. When I do, I mention I'd been on the phone with Nick who was learning all of the delights of car insurance claims. I start the story with, "well, he was at the lake...." and Rob reminds me that we must take all things in perspective, since his mind immediately jumped to a scene such as this:
Thankfully, it was nothing of the sort.
To set the scene, Nick and his friend Rodney are parked in spaces next to each other at the lake, but with each car pointing the opposite direction, so that the two drivers' doors face one another. Nick has opened his door to allow the "third door" to be accessed into the miniscule backseat of the Saturn for someone else to hop in but then proceeds to begin rolling in reverse before his door is fully shut. Unbeknownst to him, Rodney has opened his car door, hopped in, but not closed it. Imagine the slo-mo scene in which both doors interlock and hyperextend one another's hinges, cracking the fender panels, as Nick panics to find the brake.
So.
Rodney's door will no longer shut.
Nick's door will shut, but, as they discover on the ride home, randomly pops open while hitting bumps on the road.
It's Sunday night, and they call one tow truck who learns they are "out of town" and says no. (???)
So Rodney has the guys in the back seat of his car hold the door shut all the way back to the dorm at Blinn.
Nick spends the night stewing, berating himself for being so stupid, and imagines just getting both of their cars fixed "out of pocket." He wakes up in the morning infinitely wiser and calls his mom.
He texts me the photos of the cars.
I take one look, immediately call him back, and say, "We have to call the insurance company."
Now, Bob is out of town. Bob's out-of-town crises are legendary. The first work trip he ever went on, our dog died in the night. That was the worst one. If you'll recall, this time last year, he was out of town and I had what can only be described as a post-operative nervous breakdown (AKA, the Friday from Hell, in case you want to relive it.) It never fails. Bob is out of town, something is going to go wrong that he will feel like he has to fix and can't fix and is powerless to help, blah, blah, blah.
So I go into super-Mom mode, organize the details, file the claim online, and don't mention it to Bob until late that night when there is nothing more that could be, needed to be, or might even hope to have been done.
When Nick saw the body shop bill estimates today for both his and Rodney's cars, he finally understood the "we have to call the insurance company" comment.
Working with vehicles that are decidedly more expensive to repair that the two in this case, I was pleasantly surprised that their combined estimates came only to 3K, and that's with entirely replacing Rodney's door.
The time I hit the priest (no, really, that's not the set-up for a joke. I for real and for true rear-ended a priest in his shiny, brand-new-as-in-still-had-paper-plates Cadillac a decade ago) the bumper job alone ran over 5K.
So, we'll count our blessings and remind ourselves that this is what insurance is for, that no one was hurt, that if Nick was going to have an accident, this is the one we would want for him to have to learn from. And we look at that lake picture and manage to laugh.
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