Harbinger

I banged the car today.

It was loud and it sounded painful. I was navigating the little roundabout in front of my house. It's little because it's not more than 7 - 8 feet in diametre, put there instead of a road bump so people would slow down on the straight road heading into my residential area.

So there I was, already late for work, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the gear shift (it's an auto, what's my hand doing there?). I reach the roundabout and the next thing I know, I hear a tremendous bang on the front left corner of the vehicle. Fuck! The hit is hard enough that my hand moves the gear shift from D to N, and the engine just roars without moving.

Damnit! What the fuck was I thinking? Why wasn't I paying attention? I'm too upset to stop immediately and check the damage. I'm thinking it's gonna be a huge dent and that I should have just insisted with management on a smaller car and not some blurdy huge tank to drive around, beamer though it may be.

I gun it almost all the way to the office, all the while kicking myself for being so careless. There doesn't seem to be any exceptional vibrations or shake to the car, so I hope it's OK. I recall when I first got the car earlier this year I was treating it with kid gloves, begin extra careful to go slower around corners (it is a big car) and road bumps.

I get to the office slightly late. I scoot into a side parking slot, switch my slides to my heels, then steeled myself to go check out the damage.

I couldn't spot the damage. I thought it'd be huge or bad, judging from the horrible sound in the morning. I thought that there was a dent on the body right after the wheel but upon closer inspection, it didn't seem to be a dent. I walked over to the driver's side to see if the "dent" was also on that side. The driver's side did have the same "dent" (strange the things you don't notice if you don't really look; i never noticed there was a slight indentation on the body right after the wheel, where the door is).

So I guess it was all sound and no effect? I dunno. But I gotta remind myself to be more careful when driving, especially with big cars. I can't recall the number of times I've scraped the rim of Dad's Merc on curbs and pavements while turning. Sigh...I hope this isn't a sign of things to come over the weekend.