An unfortunate event

Joy of joys, our car arrived today! Our car man (for lack of a better term) drove us down into the car park, and showed us all the features of the car. Although I haven't converted my driving license yet, since I plan to pick Erik up from the airport tomorrow I thought I ought to put some "petrol" in the tank. (Look at me all Singaporean).

I chose an easy route - there's a petrol station or two quite near to our home. I thought, "What could go wrong?" Try getting out of the car park. Due to the placement of support beams in our basement, getting out is like navigating an obstacle course. To add to the element of difficulty, the direction in which car man parked the car was the worst possible way to get out directly.

I backed the car up enough (I thought) to get around the crucial final corner, but it became quickly obvious that I was too close on the right side. I backed up and heard the scrape that makes you cringe. Starting to panic, I realized I had to go forward. Scrape once again. At that moment, complete and total panic set in. I started hyperventilating thinking, "I am going to have to physically move my car. What if someone comes and wants to leave the carpark? I'm blocking them in!" and all sorts of other things while I am frantically trying to get out the locked passenger side. My kids were quiet and compassionate - Ethan threw his arm around me from behind the seat.

Finally I got out and nabbed a couple of workers I had seen drive into the car park. One of them took my keys, climbed into my car and put my car into reverse like he could have done it with his eyes closed, while I was insisting, "I think you're just going to have to pick it up and move it!" After he got it out I said, "Could you please just pull it around the corner for me?" He smiled and obliged.

Our trip to the petrol station went well, although I wasn't far enough over at the first one I encountered to pull in. No problem - there's one every mile or so here. When we got back to the carpark Ethan said, "Mommy, maybe this time you should try not to scrape the car."

So what's the damage? Not much - the black plastic guards on that side all got scraped off, and there's a little paint missing. In certain lights you can see a slight dent but I think it will be covered by the black guards once replaced.

Someday I know we'll laugh about this - I'm kind of laughing already. But mostly I'm just sort of wallowing in the idiot pool right now.