After.

By now, I've told this story to enough people that I am sick of it. But for those of you who have not gotten my late-night phone calls, taken a 3-mile run with me, been trapped in a car with me on the way to visit teach or stayed after a pack meeting to chat with me, I'll fill you in on how we went from being way pumped up to majorly deflated.

We strolled out of the Q with confidence, knowing that we wouldn't have a long walk to the car...you know, with the free parking pass and all. Up a couple stairs, and hey look--there's the car! Wow, I didn't realize it was this close! Wait. That can't be our car. Our car is perfect, beautiful, and less than six months old!!! No, this car with the front bumper hanging off has to belong to someone else.

Except that it was our car.

Let's make this long story short.

We had backed in to the parking spot. Some doofus was backing out of his spot and slammed into our car. And then proceeded to leave. That's right, folks. Hit-and-run.

Fortunately, as some guy was helping Glenn completely remove the bumper so that we could get home, a parking attendant walked up. Said he'd seen who did it and flagged him down, and that the perp was waiting down below. Awesome.


Waiting, waiting, and more waiting...and finally we exchanged info with the guy, who muttered some lame story about how he was sorry and that there was not place for him to pull over, so that's why he left.

Um, excuse me? You hit someone while backing out of your parking spot? You pull right back in, dude. You then wait for the person to come to their car, or you leave a flippin' note at very least. Seriously. And by the way -- stop talking. We're filing reports and writing your address down here. Just keep your mouth shut!

Finally...finally!...we were headed home, only to find out as soon as we got on the Innerbelt Bridge that something was dragging and we had to pull off on W. 14th so that Glenn could jerry-rig it together with bungy cords. And may I insert here that W. 14th street in Cleveland is not necessarily where you want to be at midnight.

The next morning I called the insurance company, and yada yada yada, the car's in the shop waiting for an adjuster to look at it and I have a snazzy 2010 Camry to drive around for who knows how long.

When all's said and done, it could have been a whole lot worse. No one was hurt, we got the jerk who did it, and there's nowhere all six of us have to go all at the same time in the next couple weeks. It's just a royal pain...that I have had to create time for in my usual impossible schedule. It's just dealing with the aftermath.

Can we just go back to the way things were before?