june gloom on 4/9/2009 at 22:57

---

You know, in a fucking terrible, not-at-all-fun way.

Okay scenario- it's my grandparents' 70th anniversary, and I, my mother, and my grandparents all piled into grandpa's car to take us to dinner with some relatives- a cousin and aunt of my mom's on grandma's side of the family.

Problem: my grandpa has been in and out of the hospital and has had a couple of surgeries, due to falling and breaking his hip back in June and complications arising afterwards. He's a very tough old buzzard- when they operated on his knees a long way back they had to get a saw because his bones were so strong. But he's been having problems in recent years, and has been walking with a cane for years now. He shouldn't have been driving, but he was and had been driving again for a week. It was a bit stop-and-start, but I wasn't expecting anything to happen since the guy's been driving since before there were even traffic laws.

Boy was I wrong.

The parking lot we wanted was behind the restaurant, which itself was on a street corner, delineating a large main street and a small side street. The parking lot bordered the small side street. It was small and difficult to get into, but there was another public parking lot across the street (behind another building, but larger) and there's parking along the street as well. (It's one-way, just fyi)

We pull into the restaurant, where there's only two parking spaces. One is at the far end of the tiny lot, sandwiched between some ratty-looking truck and the wall of a building neighboring the restaurant. The other, close to the sidewalk (and therefore close to the entrance) was carry-out only, except we didn't notice this until we were already pulled in.

Granda pulls out of the space, except his foot gets stuck on the accellerator (stuck under the brake, as far as I can tell) and we do a backwards U-turn, into the street, and bang into someone's $70,000 Lexus. He tries to go forward, but his foot is still stuck and we zip through the lot, turning just in time to only glance off the wall, slide into the other empty parking space, jump the concrete bar, and hit a tree, which finally stopped us.

Damage: matching dents on either side of the front bumper, the left one from the wall, the right one from the tree. Large dent in the corner of the Lexus' front bumper. Paint transfer all over the wall. Some of the bark of the tree was stripped off. Grandpa's ego. Grandma a little bruised in the chest from the seatbelt. Anniversary dinner ruined. Nobody seriously hurt.

Cop came along, took our statements, told the owner of the Lexus (who was understandably pissed, but honestly if you can afford a $70,000 Lexus you can probably afford the insurance to fix a little dent) and informed my terrified grandma, at the request of my great-aunt, that they were not going to court. Grandpa is extremely rattled too. The cop was very nice, and agreed with mom that this sort of thing happens all the time- shoes get stuck under the brake and you can't move them.) It's a good thing we weren't moving very fast and that tree stopped us. The cop drove the car out of the grassy area it had stopped in (getting it past a tree and lamppost was quite a feat) and backed the car rather expertly into the spot we wanted.

We all went in and had dinner anyway, but the whole thing had kinda ruined the celebratory nature of it.

It took every fiber in my being after we finally stopped to keep from throwing my hands up and yelling "Whee! Let's do it again!"

So yeah, that was my Thursday evening, and it wasn't even over yet. Except having to crawl up a spyware-infested laptop's asshole because I'm apparently Mr. Fixit isn't really all that relevant.

Any legal types have anything to say?

[edit] Oh, and according to the waittresses, that wasn't the first time that had happened in that parking lot that day.

Kuuso on 4/9/2009 at 23:08

---

You should have seriously used that situation for some comedy, especially since it seemed nobody was hurt. Opportunities like this won't probably ever come again.

Glad you guys are ok though.

SubJeff on 4/9/2009 at 23:31

---

People always have sense of humour failures just at the times you should be making jokes because you can dammit, you can because you're ALIVE!

Glad you're ok.

Turtle on 5/9/2009 at 00:06

---

Comedy 'Obama Health Care' reply.

Scots Taffer on 5/9/2009 at 01:39

---

The privatised cops show up, they subcontract to Lexus, so they beat the shit out of your grandpa and rape your grandma. They laugh at dethtoll's joke and then the cop holds everyone down while the Lexus owner gets to drive slowly over their faces.