How Not to Start Your Day

1. Try on all of your jeans hoping one pair will fit and not squeeze you out of the top of them. What? Did they all shrink over the summer? This is why I like summer clothes better. Aside from the bikini, they’re actually more forgiving. Jeans are evil.

2. Eat a slice of banana bread. With chocolate chips. Hell, why not? You’re already feeling like a giant fat-ass.

3. Eat said slice of banana bread while driving. Think that you’re sufficiently stopped in the line of cars waiting to go through the roundabout, but find out you’re not when you bump the car in front of you.

4. Make sure it’s a Porsche that you hit.

Yes, this was my morning. Yes, I hit a car. Bumped it, really. Bumped it enough to see it move, but it was just a tap. Even Mr. Porsche Driver wasn’t sure that I hit him. I had hoped he wouldn’t notice, then saw him start to pull over. Oh, shit, he did notice! No, he kept driving, he didn’t notice. Shit, he’s pulling over again! In the roundabout. No, I’m not stopping in the roundabout. Let’s find a parking lot for our little rendezvous.

I pull over in a parking lot where we won’t have an audience. He has a small girl-child in the front seat. Great. I hit a kid. Wait a minute, small children aren’t supposed to ride in the front seat! Isn’t he breaking some kind of child safety law? I know, Porsches don’t have backseats, but still. Surely that makes him more of a criminal than me with my little tap to his bumper.

He gets out. “It had to be the Porsche!” Yes, I noticed that you’re driving a Porsche. Yes, it is far superior to my Honda Civic, circa 2000, circa turn-of-the-century. Thanks for stating the obvious. He asks if I hit him. Um, is this a trick question?? He says he thought he popped the clutch. A quick moral dilemma argument goes on in my head but I tell the truth. After all, I want my Karma to come back to me in the form of lottery winnings, not cancer in my face.

He examines his bumper. Not a scratch, not a ding, nothing. He examines my front bumper. With the huge scratch from the bike that hit me earlier this year. And all of the dead bugs. And the chipped paint. How white trash do I feel in this moment? Damn, I knew I should have washed my car this weekend.

I apologize. He smiles, says, “See ya. Thanks for stopping.” No exchange of information, no further humiliation.

Although, if he had been cute and didn’t have a small child in his front seat (thereby endangering her life), I would have given him my number. You know, just in case.