I was in middle school and my sister Jaclyn was in high school. Her first car was a cute little purple Saturn. It wasn't a purple-y purple, but more of a plum. It was so perfect for her and I loved riding with her. We would listen to Broadway soundtracks and Lisa Loeb ("You say... I only hear what I want to...) (SUCH A GOOD ALBUM) and she would give me a ride to my various friends and activities so it was a happy little life we lived in that little purple Saturn.
One day, after school, I needed her to give me a ride up to church. For what, I do not know. But she did. She drove me to church and we entered the property using a driveway that wasn't used very often. We didn't go through the main driveway. Instead, we chose to use the driveway that lead to the "Youth House". The Youth House was a small house on the side of the church property that was where the middle schoolers and high schoolers congregated on Sunday mornings and throughout the week. The driveway into the Youth House was a dirt driveway, and at the time they would rope off that dirt driveway with a rusty old chain.
And you know what? Sometimes that rusty old chain was very hard to see when sitting low against the dirt driveway. LET'S JUST KEEP THAT IN MIND, SHALL WE??
So Jaclyn drove me to church and I have created some visual aids to help y'all understand the chain of events here. Prepare to be super impressed with the quality of these images and the attention to detail.
Fig. 1
So there we were, happily chatting and singing along to some wonderful song.
And then we turned left into the driveway.
BAM.
The rusty chain (that we could not see before turning) slammed on top of the hood of the little purple Saturn.
Fig. 2
We screamed. The chain hitting the car was LOUD. And then we kind of panicked. Especially Jaclyn. "What do I do?!? WHAT DO I DO?!?!"
I'd like to take a moment and discuss how my sisters and I, especially in our younger years, did not function well in a moment of crisis. We would kinda freeze up and just become frantic. For example, one time our security alarm started going off in our home for no reason and Shannon went up to the keypad and hit the panic button which caused a lot more things to happen. When she was asked why she chose to hit the panic button she said "I was panicking."
Anyways, Jaclyn was freaking out because there was a chain on the hood of her car and she didn't know what to do. She didn't feel like she could go into reverse because there were many cars passing behind us on a busy street and we couldn't back up into the busy traffic.
So she kept saying "what should we do?"
So then, Jenny, the 13-14 year old unlicensed driver in the passenger seat, came up with an idea.
"Just keep going forward" I said.
I SAID TO JUST KEEP GOING FORWARD.
JUST KEEP DRIVING.
WITH THE RUSTY CHAIN THAT IS BLOCKING THE ENTRANCE TO THIS DRIVEWAY ON THE HOOD OF YOUR CAR.
JUST KEEP DRIVING, I SAID.
This is the moment I regret. Those words. This is one of those times I look back on as a really, really low point of my life. This doesn't speak well for my intelligence.
So she pressed on the gas and slowly eased forward.
The chain scraped up the hood. It scraped up the windshield. It scraped across the roof of the car. It scraped down the back windshield. It scraped across the trunk, and then....
CRACK.
Spoiler.
Fig. 3
I am not sure exactly what we thought was going to happen here, but I guarantee you that we never came close to considering that we would rip the spoiler off the back.
The entire car needed a paint job.
The windshield needed repairing.
The spoiler had to be fixed and reattached.
MY POOR DAD.
To call him and explain to him what had happened.... I'm pretty sure he walked us through several different options we had other than "drive forward" but, you know... what was done was done.
And I'm pretty sure the church put some reflectors onto that old rusty chain. Because it was totally the chain's fault.
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