A woman hit my car on Monday. Why, in three out of the four times in my life that my car has been hit, has it been a old person. Hmm. (Who hit me the fourth time, I don't know--it was a hit and run in the parking lot at work with a company vehicle. Someone in Maintenance got away with it.)

When I was 18, I was driving with my parents back to college and a 72-year-old guy who'd stopped at a bar for a Sunday afternoon drink pulled out from a parking lot to right across the highway, and I was unable to find enough road to avoid hitting him.

About 6-7 years later, my car was legally parked in front of my parents' house when the neighbor across the street backed out of her driveway and apparently never considered that there might be a car back there. In fact there were two, but my sister's car was behind mine and didn't get hit.

On Monday, I pulled into the parking lot at Pizza Hut to pick up a personal pan pizza. This 70 to 75-year-old woman was backing her Cadillac Seville out of a space right by the door, so I stopped completely to let her get out. I was actually turning right to go to another space but I stopped to give her plenty of room to stop backing up and go around me.

Well, she did OK getting out, but she cut it too close when she turned left around me. I saw her car really close to my window and I thought, "Man, she's close." And then she hit the back driver side of my car, which was sticking out about six inches further than the rest of my car because I was starting to turn.

$900 damage on my car. And she scraped the entire side of her Cadillac on my car, so I'l bet her's is going to be a lot more. A lot more.

I got out of my car and just stood there to see what she would say. She kind of threw up her hands and said, "I've got State Farm!" Gee, that really makes me feel better, ma'am. And I was polite, too. I called her ma'am, instead of idiot.

My insurance company was great--the check arrived today. We need a loaner for the 2-3 days it'll take to fix it, so I have to wait until the 28th, but it'll get back to normal eventually. And the body shop says they'll fix where Greg scraped my passenger side mirror on the garage frame for free!

There's a silver lining for ya. Sigh.