DSC_0057, originally uploaded by jason.bennion.

Want to know how to ruin a beautiful springtime Sunday afternoon? How about having someone back into your Mustang and bugger up pretty much the entire passenger side? Yeah, that’ll do it…

I am admittedly one of those people who project far too much of their ego into their cars. My first accident, which happened way back when I was a cocky seventeen-year-old with a self-image based to an unhealthy degree on my beloved Cruising Vessel, had a devastating effect on my psyche, if not so much on the car itself.

(For whatever it’s worth, there were some extenuating circumstances behind my reaction to that wreck. The Cruising Vessel — that is, my ’63 Ford Galaxie — had only recently been restored by my dad and his brother Lou, who was dying of a horrible, debilitating disease and had used the project as a sort of occupational therapy in the early days following his diagnosis. I was angry about the actual damage to the car, but I also experienced a huge flood of guilt. I felt like I’d let down the two men who mattered most to me. Even though the accident wasn’t my fault, I’d failed in my obligation to take care of a rare and precious object that had been entrusted to me, something that contained — in my mind, anyhow — a big piece of my uncle’s soul. And worst of all, I knew that Louie was no longer up to the task of fixing the damage. The ALS was progressing too quickly, and he could no longer hold his tools. And that forced me to confront his mortality and the hell my father was going through and my own grief and a lot of other things that were much too large for me to be facing at that point in my life. And of course my beautiful, unique classic car was maimed, and surely that reflected poorly on my own coolness, right? At least, that was what I feared at the time…)

I’ve gained a certain amount of perspective in the 22 years since the Cruising Vessel got its rear quarter punched in by a rusty old farm truck at a convenience store that doesn’t even exist anymore. My self-image — such as it is — is no longer based on what I drive. Even so, I’m really proud of my Mustang. I feel good when I drive it. It’s the first new car I’ve ever owned, and I’ve worked hard to make the payments on it even when I haven’t been reliably employed. I’ve worked harder still to keep it in good condition. Up until 1:45 PM on April 19, that car still looked virtually new.

What happened to it then was almost a perfect replay of what happened to my Galaxie back in 1987. I’d just turned into the local Best Buy store so The Girlfriend could return a power brick she bought for her keyboard and later learned was the wrong model. There’s a sort of lane that runs along the side of the store from the north entrance toward the parking lot proper on the south side of the building, and I was driving down it the same way I’ve done a hundred times in the past. It was sunny and the air was sparkling and the temperature was in the low 70s. We had B.B. King’s new CD playing on the stereo. A perfectly unremarkable moment of mundane contentment.

Then Anne made a sort of gasping sound. I turned to see what she was doing. And that was the moment of impact. I didn’t even realize at first what had just happened.

What had happened was that an off-duty Best Buy employee had reversed out of her parking space just as I was passing behind her. I never saw her car moving or a flash of back-up lights or anything. I just felt a strong sideways nudge as she plowed into my passenger door… and then, because my car was still moving, I heard a sickening scraping noise, and the Mustang twisted slightly to the right, out of my control, like an animal trying to break free of a snare.

The next few minutes are somewhat blurry. I remember flinging my door open, a stream of colorful metaphors gushing from my mouth. I remember Anne clutching at my hand and begging me to calm down and not hurt the other driver. I remember the other driver emerging from her car, a brunette in her early 20s whom I probably would’ve found attractive under any other circumstances; she stopped short and shrank back a little when she saw the murderous, Wolverine-style rage in my face. And I remember my first glimpse of the dent, the white scuffs and scratches, the deformed forward edge of the door, the black streak, the whole passenger side of the 2003 Mustang I just paid off two months ago, the first new car I’ve ever owned, mutilated. (Incidentally, I know the damage doesn’t look all that bad in the pic above; check out my Flickr photostream for some different angles, or just take my word for it that the whole side of the car needs replacing.)

The other driver’s first words, to her credit, were to ask if anyone was hurt — no, we weren’t. (I later got the shakes when I realized that Anne likes to hang her arm out the window when we’re driving on warm days and it was only by some quirk of luck that she wasn’t doing it at that particular moment. If she had been, given the height of the impact and the way our cars ground sideways… well, sometimes it’s a curse to have a vivid imagination. I’m certain she could’ve lost her hand, if not her whole arm, had things been just a little bit different.) The police were summoned. A witness stuck around to provide a statement. Information was exchanged. All very matter-of-fact and somewhat surreal. Inside, though, I felt something that’s hard to put into words, a sucking bleak feeling of having lost something. A feeling somewhat like despair, only that’s not quite the right word.

Now, with a few days distance, I can see that the situation went as well as it possibly could have, considering. The damage appears to have been cosmetic only, nothing mechanical; I drove the car home from the accident with no problems. The other driver has insurance and accepted full responsibility for the wreck — I’m thinking seriously of tracking her down when this is all over and apologizing to her for my bad language and general attitude when she herself was being so decent — and the insurance companies are (so far) playing nice with each other. The car is in the body shop and the parts are on order. And as I said, no one was hurt. And yet…

And yet.

I know people get into accidents that are much worse, that their cars are totaled and their houses burn down and they lose everything they own, and sometimes people even die. My little fender bender is really nothing compared to that.

Nevertheless, it’s so goddamn unfair and frustrating that something you’ve worked so hard for and love so much can be messed up in the blink of an eye, through no fault of your own aside from a decision to go to freaking Best Buy on a sunny afternoon. This incident is the cherry on top of a vile emotional sundae that’s been piling up for months, and it just sucks. That feeling I couldn’t find the right word for a minute ago isn’t despair… it’s defeat. I spent the rest of Sunday and a couple of days following feeling utterly defeated by an indifferent, overcrowded, infuriating, inelegant, increasingly incomprehensible, increasingly insane, and utterly inhumane world.

And yes, I know it’s only a stupid car and that a lot of people would accuse me of being melodramatic. Too damn bad.