ten billion butterfly sneezes

My little bride’s ‘98 Saturn SL2, after 106,000 miles of acceptably reliable service, was in an accident last Thursday. MLB was turning left, and got clipped in the right rear by a Nissan who was barrelling down the right turn only lane. Technically, it was MLB’s fault for turning into oncoming traffic. There’s little doubt the Nissan was speeding, but in the absence of any radar guns, it’s our word against theirs. In the Nissan’s defense, its driver made a valiant attempt to stop, but came up just short. MLB is a good and careful driver, as her 30 year accident-free streak attests. She said she never saw the Nissan. That’s why incidents such as this are called accidents.

No one was hurt, save for jangled nerves. The old ‘98 was not so fortunate. The impact was just at the rear of the right rear door, which is a shattered mess of Forest Green Saturn plastic. The right rear wheel is at an angle that no right wheel should be; it rendered the car undrivable. I’m no body man, but there’s doubtless countless other suspension-related parts and supporting doo-dads needing replacement. And being 10 years old, with 106K miles, there’s little doubt in by mind that the car is totalled.

So, not by choice, we’re in the car market. We’d hoped to go another year or two, more if everything was still reliable. But that was not our choice to make. We went on a test drive today, liked the car. We’re waiting on State Farm to pronounce the old ‘98 dead; after that, we’ll have a new rig gracing our parking spot.

That old ‘98 has a sweet spot in our hearts; it had the best engine of all our Saturns, MLB thought the seats were comfortable, and we found our current cat sleeping under it 8 years ago.

The real tragedy is that when being so suddenly and irrevocably dispatched into salvage-yard heaven, it had a full tank of gas.

-k-

tbbs tags: Life