Xylophone

My car and I have been through a fair amount together during its short five years of life, and she hasn't come out of everything unscathed. I list here, for your reading enjoyment, the short and sordid history of Stacey the WonderCivic:

-fall 2002, I think: a truck I'm parallel parked behind backs up and munches the hood of my car. The driver takes responsibility and offers to pay for repairs, but under the condition that we take it to a certain body shop way downtown because he knows the owner and can get himself a deal. The body shop takes a long time, then tries to give us back the car when there's obviously a big crack in the windshield. They claim it was there before, we tell them it wasn't, they call the guy who hit my car to get his permission to fix it (?), he calls me fifteen minutes later and yells at me over the phone. We eventually get the car back, intact.

-sometime after that: as a new driver, I run over a curb at a gas station, and get a scratch along the side of the car.

-summer 2003: driving home from work at 3 in the morning, I notice that my driving feels.... lumpy. I pull over to find that I have a reeeeaaal flat tire. Being the wimp that I am, I call my dad and demand that he wake up, get dressed, and drive out to help me fix it. He complies, and my first tire-changing lesson is held in a gas station parking lot at 3:30 am with a very tired teacher and an equally tired, but less groggy, student.

-winter 2005: somebody leaves a light on inside the car overnight, and I get to watch my friend give me a jump in minus 30 weather.

-also winter 2005, multiple times: I foolishly drive into various drifts of snow, and require the assistance of passersby and passengers to push me out. The last instance was particularly exciting, as I parked on what looked to me to be the side of the road, but was actually a ditch, filled up level with the street, with snow. Dismay set in as the car noticably sunk several feet. 9 in the evening, on a lonely street, with no shovel. A few cars pass, and finally a kind-hearted guy in a truck pulls over and tows us out. I vow never to get stuck in the snow again.

-april 2006- there are a few here
:somewhere between Saskatoon and Calgary, the weatherstripping on the right side of the windshield comes loose. Superglue does not help.
:Vancouver, a few days later. We wake up to find the keyhole of the driver's side door munched up, the bike-holding part of the roof rack (as well as the bike itself) gone, and the little triangular window on the back right door smashed in. At least the thieves didn't smash one of the bigger, openable windows. How thoughtful they were.
:oh yeah, and they spilled coffee on the floor of my car, so for the rest of the trip it smelled like stale hazelnut. (not so bad, actually)
:somewhere just south of Pescadero, CA, we stop at a gas station. The driver of the car accidentally scrapes the side of the car along a blue pole. I hope people think the blue streak is really just artistic pinstriping.

I feel a little nervous, because it's been six months since anything really happened to the car. That means that whatever's coming up next is going to be really bad. I bet I know what it'll be, too. Aside from some monumental crash, somebody's going to try and break into it again, and ruin the lock on the passenger side door, and then I'll have no way of getting into the car, save climbing through the trunk. That'd REALLY give me and my car some character.