car accident, sans driver

My Jeep was the victim of an unfortunate fender bender today. Oddly enough, I wasn't driving. No one was. It was parallel parked along a road while I was having lunch with Stephylou.

There's something to be said about intuition and not listening to it. The last time I regretted it was the day I parked my car in motorcycle parking at work because there weren't any other parking spaces except for fire lanes and handicap. The moment I walked away from my car, I had a feeling.

Today was no different. As I was pulling into Madison Park, I circled the block noticing that parking availability was pretty low, so when I saw a spot on the street in front of Bing's, I went for it. Not a lot of room, but enough for me to squeeze in without touching either car in front or behind me. It wasn't a clean parking job, the nose of my Jeep still in the street more than my back end, but it was not too far out into the road to try and navigate another 200 point turn to get it perfect. Besides, I'd have lunch and be gone in the hour. But I did pause for a moment before I locked my car and walked away.

And then at lunch, we sat outside, my chair facing the street where I could see the top of my Jeep a few blocks down. Just as we were paying for the bill, I looked up to notice that the car behind mine was leaving, and that another car was eagerly pulling in. I thought to myself, "I hope they leave me enough room to pull out of the space."

Stephylou and I walked to my car, and as we got there, something looked off. My front bumper was touching the black Cadillac in front of me. Full on contact! At first I thought the Cadillac had backed into my car, and couldn't figure out why since there wasn't any car in from of them and they had all the room in the world.

And as the wheels in our brains started to churn, an elderly gentleman approaches us and asks if this is my car. I nodded and then the pieces started to fall in place. I looked at his dented hood, then my Jeep and then the car in front of me, figuring out just as he saying, "I was parking my car and accidentally hit the accelerator." And bam, he hits my car, my car rolls forward and hits the Cadillac.

I immediately got in my car and backed up so that I could assess the damage. Just a little scratched paint on the right of my front fender, but as far as I could see, no dents. The Cadillac suffered some scratched paint too, but no denting. The guy who hit us, well, his car sustained the most damage since I have a big, fat spare tire and tow package on the back of the Jeep.

He left me his name in case I decided to file a claim with insurance. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to leave my number with the Cadillac since my car technically was the one that rolled into it, but he left his info with that car too. Seems fair since I wasn't even present when it happened.

Shocked, yes. Angry, no. I really felt bad for the guy. All he wanted to do was go to the Post Office to mail a letter and all of a sudden, he's dealing with a three car accident. I needed to get back to work, so I didn't spend a whole lot more time looking at the paint chipping off of my car. I just can't sweat the small stuff right now. Hopefully it's not worse than I think it is. The last thing I want to deal with is an insurance claim for something so insignificant.

If I thought I was having a bad day. The driver of the offending car was having a worse day.