I side swiped a parked car.

Don't laugh, it's not funny. I only got my license a week ago and my parents don't want me to drive cause I'm not on the car insurance yet. I was lucky they let me go. Typical.

So it's like this, my older sister Dana was on a school trip to the neighboring state. She took a train. Her train got in at midnight. My dad was supposed to park the car in the parking lot of the train station and and ride his bike home so she would be able to just drive home when her train got in. That was the plan. Then there was my little sisters chamber music concert that got out a bit late. My dad is like "well, if I go park the car and ride back it will be ten thirty and I have to get up tomorrow morning. Karen! I bet you would like to get up at midnight and go get your sister." Yeah. Sure. So my dad bailed and the only other option was my mother who is seven months pregnant and NOT feeling very well. So I agreed. Dad gave me directions to the train station and they were pretty simple. I actually had no idea there was a train station down town. But it didn't sound hard to find. Mom suggested that my younger sister Clara come with me so that I would not be driving around down town alone on a friday night. That was fine. But Then... mom started giving Clara some well meaning advice and just making sure she knew what she was getting into. There are going to be lots of intoxicated people roaming the streets and you are Not to make eye contact with Any one. As she continued I could see Clara getting more and more nervous. By bed time she was like "Maybe this is not such a good idea." Too late now! So we put a DVD on the computer and watched until it was time for us to go. So we get into the car in our pajamas and start heading for down town.

The streets were pretty empty until we got right to the heart of town down. Then we ran into the one thing that could throw off dad directions: Hoopfest. Well, if you know what Hoopfest is than I guess you know where I live but if not, Hoopfest is when about two thirds of the population of my city get together and play basketball. All the roads are blocked off and filled with basketball hoops. It's a huge deal. My city is a little obsessed with basketball. So we get to the street that we are supposed to turn on and, naturally, it's blocked off. Or at least it looked like it was blocked off. I might mention that my vision is kind of bad right now cause I have a clogged tear duct in my right eye that waters and oozes puss every once in a while and generally makes it hard to see. I have glasses as it is so at every stop light I had to take my glasses off and wipe my eye. As for the time between stop lights; I just prayed and squinted and blinked. So, seeing that the street is blocked, we pull into a parking lot and use the alley to get onto another street. This begins a long adventure of trying to navigate the one way streets and detours. Oh and did I mention that there were indeed crowds of intoxicated people stumbling around, j-walking, running (not just blindly stepping but running like they wanted to get hit) out in front of traffic, and generally making things interesting for the two lost little girls in the giant station wagon. Clara was freaking out. "I am really interested in the glove compartment right now. I am NOT making eye contact." She so comforting. This is doing nothing for my nerves. "LOOK! Hallelujah! there is the street we are supposed to be on! But dad said to just keep going cause there was a dead end and that is the train station. But this is a two way street (amazingly) and I have no idea if I would go right or left. Wait, do I even have a choice? Is that way blocked off? No. I guess we're going to go right cause it's easier right now and I am not sure if it's legal to go left just now." There are all these do cones and those sandwich board type 'do not enter' signs all over the street so I am trying to get into the right lane without hitting any of them when Clara yells "Karen your too close!!!" *CrashScrape* "You just hit that car." No! Really? "I think that's called side swiping." "you're just going to keep going!" "Yep hit and run. No I'm going to find a place to park and survey the damage." "You're going to get OUT of the car!!!??" I did a really bad parking job in the first parking lot that presented itself; just on the other side of the block. We sat there in the parked car for a few just catching our breath. Then I we got out (against Clara's better judgment) and looked at the side of out car. In the dark with water in my eye it did not look all that bad. Nothing was missing. We still had our windows and our rear view mirror. There was no obvious paint scratch. There are lots of people laughing and some yelling in this parking lot so at this point we just wanted to be back in the car with the doors locked again so we did not do a real meticulous check. Jolly good enough! Karen has trouble backing out of her lousy parking job but she gets back on the road without hitting anything else to we can call that a victory. Three cheers for two way streets! We when back around the block to see if we had hurt the other car. It was this big ugly black ( or so dirty and old that it was very dark anyway) truck. Or something. I am not good at identifying different kinds of cars. In any case it was bigger then ours in every dimension. It's not hard to have a taller cars then ours (though this one was fairly tall) but it was pretty impressive for its girth and length. We could see a little piece of the wood paneling off the side of our ugly old station wagon on the ground next to it but it did not look at all damaged (in the dark, through the window, with water in my eye. So we were a little distracted looking at the car we hit and forgot for a moment that we were looking for the train station. Then we got back on task. "Dad said it was a big brick building and you can't miss it." Right. All the buildings in this part of down town are big and brick. There is no dead end. But there is that building sitting a ways back from the street. Could that be it? Yeah. That's it. We side swiped a truck parked across the street from the train station. But, of course, by the time we figured this out, the only entrances to the parking lot had big 'do not enter signs on them. We have to go around again.

Once again, between detours and one way streets and people we were not supposed to make eye contact with it took us about another ten minutes to get back to the parking lot across the street that we had parked in before. Dana was just going to have to walk a little way cause I was not about to chance missing the entrance again trying to get closer. My parking job was a little better. Once I decided on a space that I thought might fit the ark. There was also this little black pickup (or it looked black. Everything looks black at night) sitting in the middle of the lot, not in a parking slot but just sitting there with it's lights on blocking my way. I had wanted to find a place closer to the cross walk where there were not so many cars and I could make a really wide turn into the slot. But no. There was this pickup. I thought at first that it was waiting for us and as I was not eager to park with this guy staring at me, I stopped for a moment hoping it would pass me or go park or something. But it didn't, it just sat there. I wasn't about to try and make eye contact with the driver and signal for him to go so I pulled into a slot and parked.

I gathered up my purse and looked around for anything else in our car that any one might want to take. I can't imagine anyone suspecting there was anything of value in that hunk of junk but you never know. That pickup is still sitting there. We're in our pajamas. We were counting on getting a place in the train station parking lot and just waiting for Dana to come find us. Now we have to walk across the parking lot, across the street, through another parking lot, and into the train station to wait for Dana who might be searching the lot already. Smooth. We got out and Clara was paranoid about the doors getting locked. I just want to get inside where there are security guards. But she insists that I have to lock her door with the key. Stupid old car doesn't have power lock on the key chain. We stood there with a pickup behind us for three minutes or so trying to get the door locked but it's not happening so we close it, stick the key in and pretend to lock it. No one would want to rob out car anyway right? We walk away, past the pickup. We didn't make eye contact of corse but I could have sworn the two guys in the pick up were watching us. I looked back as we waited for the light to turn and so one of the guys get out of the pickup. He was walking towards our car but he looked over his shoulder at us the next second so I starred at the light again rather hastily. "You know, Clara, now would be a very appropriate time to say a prayer to St Michael the archangel." I don't know why we did not think of this before. St. Mike and I should have become very good friends by now. "God save the car." I mutter and we cross the street.

It's 12:10. Dana said her train got in at midnight so by that information she should already be here. There is no sign of her in the parking lot. Or in the lobby. Clara remarks, at this point, on the large number of people we ought not to make eye contact with in this building. Thank you Clara. She is staring at the various vending machines and trying to look inconspicuous. Without making eye contact we, deduced that the guy sitting behind the counter over there must be a security guard. Karen is very glad and resolves not to go out of sight of said personage. We approach and ask him if a train had come in with in the last quarter hour. After assuring us that he didn't know anything and we ought to ask the train people, he said that he hadn't seen any large group of people disembark so it must not have come yet. Good. We sat down and waited. Clara stared very hard at a bus schedule in order to avoid making you-know-what-with anyone. I considered what would happen if someone decided they wanted a big ugly station wagon to drive home in. It was 12:30 when Dana's train came in. She was one of the first people off and she got in line for the ticket counter cause she had left something at the station on her way out and needed to retrieve it. When we first saw her we waved but I guess she was not making eye contact with anyone either so she did not see us. We would have yelled (cause it would have embarrassed her and that is our solemn duty as little sisters) but we were a little hesitant to draw that much attention to ourselves. We sat and watched her for a little while before we got up and and tapped her on the shoulder.

This is really long and it was all pretty painless from here. Dana had two male classmates with her. It was really nice to have some guys to walk with us (although Clara said they looked just like all the other people we're not supposed to M. I. C. with. Dana drove. I wonder if mom had not worked Clara into a state of paranoia we would have done better. Nothing was as bad as it seemed at the time.

So that was my adventure. I hate Hoopfest and one way streets. Dad asked what happened to the car this morning. I have not seen it but I guess it's worse than Clara and I thought last night.

Good grief. I rambled on forever. I think I am going to walk down town and watch some basketball.