Time Doesn't Exist When You're Paranoid

Gonna Drift into that Void...

So I did something stupid.

Feel free to rip me to shreds... as long as you've never done anything stupid.

I went to the grocery store -- not my usual grocery store, but the one painted to look like tinker toys. Usually when I go to the tinker-toy store, I park on street level. But it was crowded, so I had to go down into the garage. Where I parked next to a pillar.

When I came out with my groceries, my mind was going in a million directions. I had a thousand things to do. I wanted to get home and make dinner. I wondered if there was time to go to the gym.

So I backed out. And turned the wheel hard.

A second later, I heard a crunching sound.

Because of the pillar. In the place I never park below the store I rarely go to.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

And I pulled forward, fearing the worst.

Got out to look at the car. There was a big, ugly dent in the front fender. And what looked like dozens of streaks of white paint.

It looked horrible.

I stood and stared at the bumper, which had been pristine (although dirty) five minutes before.

I wondered how bad it really was, trying to figure out if the bumper had become detached anywhere.

And how much it would cost to fix it.

And whether I needed to call my insurance company.

A guy came over and looked at it with me. He told me about how he'd backed into a pole himself a few months back. "Maybe you can just bang out the dent and repaint it," he said.

He walked away and I kept staring at the dent, feeling stupid.

And then...

I heard a "pop" sound. And the dent in the bumper reversed itself. So all that was left was the white paint. Dozens and dozens of stripes of white paint.

And I licked my finger and ran it across... and the white paint came right off.

So I drove home and got some paper towels and very gentle spray cleaner. And more than 95% of the paint came off.

I'm left with a few small scratches and a very small area where the paint from my car was peeled completely off.

The next day, I told the story to someone. At the end I shook my head, remembering how stupid and horrible I felt at the time... and how lucky I was that it turned out not to be so bad.

In a split second, I realized that this was an important metaphor -- a sign from the universe. Message received.


(Thanks to Peter's Power Pop blog for the song and the cool-ass video -- perfect for the waning days of summer. Wish I could claim the retro-cool points, but I'm one of the people who'd never heard this until yesterday.)