The First Nick

I feel sort of violated. I'm pretty sure it happened while I was parked in the mall lot or at the station, because those are the only places I park. One of you SOBs in the greater Port Chester area hit my car. You took a nice little chunk out of my left rear. I'm not going to lie, I'm pissed and saddened. It is true, it is one inch on a car whose surface are is far grander, but it's kinda deep, and now that I know it's there, I notice it all the time.

For all devoted partner's comfortings about how there are products available on the market that can fix this problem, a big part of me wants to just bring the car to a professional, look up, with weepy eyes, and beg the proprietor to make my car new again. How much could that really cost? Ok, in all fairness, it's worth about $50 to me. My initial foray into the world of painting metal things was not an unequivocal success. I still haven't finished spray painting the lawn furniture and, well, as you might be able to guess, the days of lawn furniture may well be over for 2009. (On that note, what am I supposed to do with the lawn furniture in the winter? The garage is already full of cars and sawdust from devoted partner's woodworking.) If I take the car to the shop and he says it's an hour worth of labor no matter what they do, well, I guess it's yet another trip to Home Depot for me (oh Home Depot, when did you become a stop on the weekly to-do list?).

I may have mentioned before that I'm leasing this car (which means this dent will have to be fixed eventually if I opt not to buy the car), but I do feel as though I own it - after all I could buy the car at the end of the lease if I wanted, so I feel that the car is MINE. As such, it is the most expensive thing I've ever owned, and this little cosmetic defect so soon into ownership feels bad. Bad like the first time I badly scuff the heel of a new pair of shoes (thankfully the apple green peep toes survived their maiden voyage without incident). I know cars get banged around, hell in 2001, the old Mercedes had an ass-shaped dent on the hood from, we believe, a former neighbor's ample behind, but do they really get so little time to be pristine. I even took it to the car wash last week because it was looking dusty and now, with this dent, I feel I needn't have bothered. After all, now the car is forever marred, and a little dust wouldn't have made things worse.

When I parked the car this morning and glanced back at the space so I could note the number I would need to punch into the parking meter, my eye found the dent immediately. This suggests that the sooner I have it fixed, the sooner I can walk my town's streets without malice and violence in my heart.