[Posted by Rae]
Last night I drove to Barkley to have dinner with Timothy and work at the Incubator on an Art Swap piece. Before heading to the studio, we ran Brian (co-worker) home since he lived so close and the the evening was wet and cold. I noticed on that run that my contacts were hurting me, but I ignored the discomfort and decided I’d switch to my glasses once we made it to the Inc.
So, we get back to Baltimore and 18th or whatever and I turn right down the dark, not-very-well-lit alley they call a street, see the perfect place to parallel park, and excitedly begin to maneuver my car into the space. Instead of doing the traditional parallel parking, I could tell that I had enough room to pull my nose in first and realign afterwards. Well, that was a fine and dandy plan except our Camry, our little Lola, scraped along the driver’s side of the white hyundai parked behind my spot.
My heart sank, but I held out hope that maybe it barely left a mark.
We went to examine the car and I was mortified to see not only his driver’s side door affected, but the whole front panel and bumper. It was unbelievable what I had caused and there was no one in site to confess my mistake. The “Good” angel on my shoulder (probably Timothy 
) made me write a note of apology (including my phone number), enclose that in a Ziploc and carefully attach this tiny package underneath one of his windshield wipers…we even used a bright colored piece of paper from a magazine to grab attention.
Well, as you can imagine, the whole night went from “Carefree-I’m-Excited-I-Get-To-Paint-With-Timothy!” to “Son-Of-A-Ho-I-Have-Just-Ruined-Someone’s-Ride!!!!” I called Mom and Bill for support, phoned David Martin (State Farm) to report the soon-to-be-claim, and tried to paint with my shaky hands…knowing my phone was going to ring any second with a disgruntled driver on the other end.
Right as I began to calm down, the phone, sure enough, rang. The guy (Michael) seemed incredibly nice and when I told him I was at the Incubator he said he had just left there…so he came back to meet me and discuss my note.
He got out of his car and I immediately apologized. His face kinda turned confused as he asked, “What happened?” I, equally confused, pointed to the whole front of his car and said, “That! That happened! Because I wasn’t paying enough attention!” Michael started to laugh and said, “You didn’t do that! I got side swiped on the highway the other day. Let me look at your car.” Upon examination of Lola, which was a little scraped up on the right passengers side, he explained how that was way too low to have caused the damage on his car. Together we looked closer at the Hyundai and found the exact place on the bumper where we had connected — it was enough messed up that he could easily have taken my information, but he waved it off quickly and the conversation turned towards introductions and Arts Incubator instead.
What a relief! And how ironic.
My mind reeled in the events of the evening. I flashed back to Gabe’s most recent hit-and-run when he got stuck with hundreds (or thousands?) of dollars of repair on his truck…all because someone didn’t step up and admit fault. In this case, I began to play the “What If” game, too. If I had made the decision to NOT admit my mistake, I would have carried a guilt with me FOREVER (because that’s my nature)…which, in fact, would have been undue guilt…because I didn’t actually cause much damage…but I would have never known that.
It was cool how this unfolded because honesty paid off. On both sides, really — I left a note, and he didn’t “take me” or pretend everything was my fault.
I suppose you could say that last night reinforced my belief in “GOOD.”
Oh, and I should mention how much I love and appreciate Timothy, Mom and Bill, too. NOT ONCE did they make me feel bad for my error…very, VERY kind.
