Safety Fork, the

Sometimes it’s nice to escape reality, even if only for 120 minutes.

Reality started at 7:30 A.M. this morning. The road was ridiculously slick. I have driven on ice with better traction. It turns out I can’t stop as fast as the guy in front of me. This might be a universal truth—or it might at least apply to the driver behind me.

So the three of us get out and stand in the rain. The guy I hit didn’t think he had any damage. That would be okay, because I got enough for everybody.

I didn’t think it was that bad at first. I have one of those plastic cars. If it doesn’t get hit too hard, the plastic is okay; if it does get hit too hard, the plastic cracks. I didn’t have any cracks, but the trunk lid didn’t fit right. I figured it was cosmetic, so when the driver’s dad asked me if I’d consider settling privately, I said I’d get a couple of estimates and we could talk about it.

Before you chastise me, let me explain my philosophy on insurance. I hate it when insurance is used as a clearing house for expenses. I think it’s a good idea to insure against catastrophe, but when every little thing goes through an insurance company, that just means that everyone’s bill goes up (for example, look at the cost of health insurance).

So I took the day off work and went to two places that do body work. The prognosis, doctor, was not good. My minor cosmetic damage hid a bent frame, just behind the left rear wheel well. Cost to repair: about two thousand dollars.

For those hapless readers just tuning into my life, that’s about twice what my car is worth. It’s odd, really, since the car is still drivable—not exactly the connotation of totaled. It was with a little trepidation that I called back the other driver’s dad to offer an option: if you want to settle privately, I’ll accept a thousand dollars today, or I’ll file a claim. Either way I’m covered for what I feel I’ve lost in monetary value. He agreed. We met, worked out the details, and he gave me the money. This is at about 2:00 P.M.

I think this feeling is what they were thinking about when they coined surreal. I’d been lazily thinking, over the last few months, about getting a new car—mostly spurred on my my brother’s BMW Z3 zeal—but I always figured I’d wait until my car needed an investment I didn’t think worthwhile. Now in a span of less than seven hours my car is now in need of repair greater than its value, I’ve got more for than I could have sold it for if it blew a head gasket or dropped the transmission on the road or whatever, and I still actually have the car…I’ll just never really trust it to go far from home again, and it’s not worth repairing it if anything breaks. So now I need to buy a car soon.

In that light, instead of pacing my apartment, I went to look at BMWs…

…what, did you think I was going to tell you I bought one? Hey, you really are hapless. BMWs are awesome in awesomeness, but also in expensiveness. I might consider buying one, but not on one day’s whim, and not without looking at anything else.

And then I escaped reality for two hours. Serenity was good. You should see it.