Saturday, April 18, 2009

Story Time

I don't know how I always find myself in these predicaments but through the years I have had bad luck with vehicles.

1991 - My first driving disaster. I got my Dad's Grand Prix stuck in the mud in our backyard trying to drive around the house with my friends in the mucky spring. I tried going in reverse with the door open to get unstuck and mud flew up into the car. Bad Bad Bad! Grandpa pulled it out with a tractor and I was only grounded for a month. We'd only had that car for a few months.

1994 - My Mom gave me her old 1985 Chevy Cavalier for my 16th birthday. I drove that beautiful rust bucket for a year without incident except for being a jackass and getting my hazard lights stuck on just seeing if they worked. My friends Mom had to get it off with a screwdriver. This car had holes in it, the turning indicator had been karate chopped off by my little brother so I could barely use that and brights were impossible to use. It had no cruise, no air, no power steering, the passenger seat was broken, it had no handle to pull the door closed and had to open the window a bit to do so, and the horn didn't blow. But gosh I loved that car, it had 186,000+ miles on it when I sold it for $200.
That summer Joe was trying to teach me how to drive a stick in his Pontiac LeMans. We were at the grocery store and I came off the clutch hard, stalled it out and then it proceeded to not move when in gear. I had broken an axle! Fudge! It cost Joe about $900 to fix. Ouch! That's love.


1995 - I had worked my little dime store job for over a year saving about $1500. My Dad matched my money and I bought a little 1989 Ford Escort with less than 100,000 miles. Still no air, but it had cruise and power steering. Cha bang! 4 days after selling over Cavalier I backed into a tree during a school pop can drive quickly getting the nickname Crash or Crash Test Dummy. My Dad thankfully bailed me out after the accident since my savings were drained and fixed the car. That same month I got rear-ended on my way to work but thankfully no damage was done and I ended up spinning out nearly into a ditch on snowy roads, I also hit a bunny right in front of the high school so of course got made fun of for that. One morning my English teacher was going through papers, raises his eyebrows and reads "Crash Osantowski" some friend of mine had erased Dawn on my paper. Dork. The teacher got a kick out of it. The name Crash is very endearing to me. I have many mentions of "crash" or "the tree" in my yearbook autograph page.

After my senior year things got better for me driving wise. Until a fateful morning in 2002 when I was running late for work, I was backing out of our driveway and scraped down the side of our 2000 Grand Am while driving our 1997 Chevy Venture, I knocked the sideview mirror clean off the car. I wish I had taken pictures. In 2004, I ended up totaling this same van getting hit in the rear by two different vehicles in Florida about 20 miles from our destination. What are the odds?

2005 - Coming home from Disney, we drove straight through from 5am to 3am next morning. About 2:30 am, we're almost home and I hit a dang raccoon. It totally cracked up the front of our 2003 Olds Silhouette and had to be fixed. Not soon after I got to close to a pole at the hockey rink and have a nice little blemish on the front of that van which we still own and I wish I had been driving today.

Today, we are taking a trailer to my IL's. I try to back it in, Joe starts hollering woah, woah, woah!! And I hear a big crunch. I jack-knifed it broke my tail-light cover on our 2007 Chevy Uplander by crashing it into the trailer I was towing. I'm just a stupid dumba$$. Joe is used to these crazy things, just rolled his eyes, and very calmly said drive around the *#$(@!) block and pull the $#@!*# van in the driveway. I guess he's used to this Sh!t. I'm such a loser.

Hope you enjoyed my eventful car ride down memory lane. And these were just the major incidents, I've had a few more incidents involving lawnmowers, go-karts, bikes, mailboxes, my old house...oh it's bad. But not a ticket until that darn no turn on red in October. Thanks for reading if you made it this far. I think the moral of this story might be I should just drive beater cars. ;)

14 comments:

lizandlance said...

That was entertaining. Thanks for sharing. I think the moral is not that you need to drive junker cars, but that Joe, being a TA3 should hire you your own personal driver! :)

Julie said...

I know you have driven a lot of miles over the years: work, school, hockey, softball, Florida, Florida, Florida. I think if you just take the number of incidents you have had and average your mileage you probably are no worse (nor better) than Joe Q Public driver. My question is - why were you driving with the IL trailer? Why not the son?

Dawn said...

A personal driver eh? Haha, I must drive! I love driving, which is why I wasn't driving I suppose. ;) Thanks for commenting guys.

Anonymous said...

Oh man! That was amusing!

Jill said...

For the love of Peter!!!
Dawn I think I want Amy to drive when we go to the mail or anywhere for that matter!! haha

Did you return the trailer? I thought we were getting Mike a port a john!!

I hope it's not any trouble to fix your taillight.

Dawn said...

Thanks Lesley, glad you got a laugh.

Jill - I missed the Potty talk??? When did this happen? And I just need help backing up, otherwise I'm a good driver. ;) And I looked online and the taillights are only about $60. So yeah for small favors. Oh yeah, and the infamous "tree" was Becky E's in the office. Many people hit that tree because of their curvy driveway they finally yanked it out!

mrs.notouching said...

Too funny! Sadly I can relate, except embarrassingly enough all of my accidents happened in the parking lot...whenever I leave the house my husband says: "just be careful in that parking lot"

Dawn said...

Oh parking woes, yeah I have a few of those also. ;) Thanks for making me feel better about my vehicle gaffes.

sherri and Adam said...

I got a story too....while backing into the driveway at our new house here......my MIL my passenger.....I was driving my dad's red truck (his baby) and pulling my uncle's enclosed trailer....I jack knifed if, and put my dad's bumper under his truck, which in turn smashed into some other part underneith.....causing about 3,500 worth of damage! I said I'd pay the deductable (500) and he said no, but I will never live it down or back up a trailer AGAIN! (no damage done to my uncle's trailer either) So I can't make fun of you! but I love the stories!

Debbie said...

Let me just tell you what Ryan always says........

Women drivers. No survivors. LOL

Amy said...

Well, that just stinks! Hope you were able to get it fixed with the min. cost!

Can't say you are as bad as Dennis, though. He has totaled every car we've owned!

Dawn said...

Sherri -Ouch that is quite the damage! What a rough go, you'll never live that one down will you?

Deb -Ryan's saying is cute!

Amy - A light is fairly cheap thankfully. Poor Dennis, he's had some bad luck I guess.

Kiera said...

That is quite the history. Although in this latest case, I think that you are still in the window where you can blame it on new-Mommy brain. Something along the lines of "you remember that beautiful new little baby girl we have....." :)

Thanks for the entertainment and DRIVE CAREFULLY!

* ~ *Jessica* ~ * said...

I love it! To make yourself feel better- I have backed out of the garage TWICE and hit Adam's car... the poor front end looks awful. Luckily, the back end of my van had been rear-ended before hand- so you couldn't really tell ;) It's all fixed now (except Adam's car... and I get reminded EVERY time I back out of the garage).
Thanks for sharing!