Scratches, scratches, and more scratches. It has been more than a month since I have been dealing with lots of it, left and right, front and back. Some of unknown reason, some almost obvious. The most recent is a huge scrape on my front left bumper which I noticed after we returned home from watching Batman V Superman. It is the nastiest so far since we had the car as applying rubbing compound just didn’t fix it this time.
A close inspection points to only one culprit–the wall perpendicular to our parking space. When the snafu happened wasn’t immediately clear though. Initially, I thought it was on our way back–it was my first time to back up into the tight space on a night time plus Marcus kept on annoying me with his series of questions about Batman, past and present. However, things begin to fit like a puzzle the next morning.
Curious where the bumper actually hit, I checked my sister-in-law’s wall again when I gave Marcus a stroll in his wheelchair. Nothing was obvious at first, the wall and its paint seem intact just like after I checked last night.
A few seconds of head scratching (that word again) soon pointed to a tell-tale clump of gray paint. I felt like Frank Hardy. The scrape shows that the bumper made contact on my way out which explains why a guy at the car wash where we stopped by before proceeding to the mall asked what happened to the car. I dismissed his inquiry, didn’t even bother to check the car, thinking he was referring to a damage on the rear door–one that happened more than three years ago in the same area but due to a tree’s fault.
So it wasn’t Marcus after all. My ego scratched.
I do cringe at this new unsightly mark on my front end but I know that I’ll get over it soon. It’s just like how it was with some other scratches made by envious neighbors, playful kids, careless shoppers, disappointed beggars, reckless bikers and motorcycle riders and cats, dogs, and chickens included. Name it, the car has it.
The bright side here is that I had something to draft at a parking lot while waiting for someone. I offered to drive for my brother-in-law and his family for the wedding they attended to this Easter Sunday which by the way is the main reason I decided to leave the house and have the car washed on the afternoon the car scraped the wall–and the very next day after I said the car survived unscathed its week of being parked in a tight space. Spoke too soon. Ti abi.
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Not all scratch stories are the same.
The day we moved into our new house, we observed details that seem off: the windows’ screen frames were interchanged; bits of screen were in the sliding window’s rail; a portion of the wall had uneven gray patches; and, the front door had scratches on the bottom part. All seem to be hints of sloppy workmanship showing up. But it wasn’t.
We soon learned that someone left the dog unnoticed inside the house and it eventually panicked and tried to escape and made a total mess like the Tasmanian Devil. Fortunately, help was available in short notice and everything was restored somehow. The dog now stays just outside our front door serving as our own sentry.
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Mood: 2/10 Honks! (Back online. We now have internet connection.)
Marcus Can Blog 