vehicular grief
On Monday, some idiot decided to crash into my still-newish car and run off without leaving a note. There’s a moderate amount of damage to my rear driver-side bumper, but it looks like whoever decided to hit me lost his side rearview mirror. Good. I kept the debris as evidence, although the police don’t seem to care. Apparently, nothing can be done without a license plate number or a witness description.
Jaymie kindly took me to the police station to file a report, and of course, they couldn’t do anything aside from filling out the paperwork, since there were no witnesses and no possible way to identify the moron. We did see a sleazy-looking guy while we were there who was begging the lady at the desk for his car keys, having recently been arrested for a DUI. We were a bit disgusted, though, when he said he worked for the LAUSD. As if anyone needs another reason to not send their kids to Los Angeles public schools…
So I feel pretty downtrodden right now. Not only do I have to pay out of pocket for an accident that’s not my fault — I need to haul my rear over to the repair shop and a rental car place sometime soon. I know it shouldn’t be a big deal, but I hate wasting my time doing things that aren’t absolutely necessary. Moreso than that, I feel 찝찝해. According to Naver, there’s no English equivalent for that word. I’m generally not a materialistic person and lucky for me, I don’t fawn or obsess over my car. Still, it gets to me that someone just violated my property and now I have to go through these next few days with an unneeded sense of urgency about getting it to the shop and worrying about the fact that my bumper is partially detached and that the plastic guard in my wheel well has fallen off.
And so yesterday, with all this stress, I couldn’t contain my passive aggressive rage when I came out of work to see that another judiciously challenged person had parked their car at a 45 degree angle to mine. Even better, I had an existing vendetta against this person for speeding dangerously in the parking structure at my expense. The last time, I left an empty water bottle under the person’s front tire so that when they backed out, it would crack and, ideally, startle the driver. This time I just left a note, written on a torn envelope, with the ever-so-eloquent ‘LEARN 2 PARK PLS.’
As for my car, I think I’ll put off the repairs and rental car business until the weekend. I simply don’t feel like dealing with this right now. I’ve begun feeling sick the last few days, physically.
I hate people.