I Drive a Stealth Van

Seriously. It's invisible to mortal eyes. It's bright red and big as a barn, but when you look, it just isn't there.

That's the only explanation I can come up with for the state of this poor minivan which I drive. It has numerous dents, dings, divots, scrapes, and a few growing rust spots. There are a lot of little dimples from the hail storms back in 2002, and missing paint all over the place. It looks really disreputable, and at some point my much-tried husband probably won't let me park it in front of the house any more. It's that bad.

I park it every day in a parking garage at work, and that's where the vast majority of the damage has occurred. There's always a big dent in the rear lift-gate where someone has backed into it. I'll come out of my office at the end of the day to discover a new one. I used to get these fixed, at great personal expense, but I gave it up as a bad job, because every time I paid to get that dent removed, some other klutzy driver would come along and replace it. I never see this happen, of course, because I'm at work. I just see the results. There's another big bowl-shaped dent in the passenger side now, but I did that myself. When my parking garage was closed last summer I had to use another one down the street which has strange traffic patterns and some very tight turns. I misjudged the tightest turn on my second day parking there, and got a wall with the side, and now there is a huge dent there to commemorate the occasion forever. But most of the damage has been caused by others. I can only assume it's because the van is invisible.

For instance--I have been rear-ended twice at stoplights. Why? I'm bright red and big as a barn! You'd think that would help, but it doesn't. People just don't see me. I've also been backed into at stoplights this calendar year--twice--the latest episode being just yesterday. I was waiting in line to exit the gas station (gas was only $3.83!) and the woman in front of me suddenly started going backwards at a fairly good rate of speed. In other words, it was on purpose, not just an accidental roll. I did the only thing I could--I applied myself with vigor to my horn. She slammed on her brakes, but too late. WHACK! Into my front bumper. The woman got out of her car to check damage (maybe a small scratch to her car, a much larger one to mine of course) and screamed "I thought you could SEE me!" and got back into her car and drove away.

This was deeply puzzling. Of course I could see her coming, but there wasn't a single thing in the world I could do about it. I can only imagine that, per usual, she couldn't see ME. Or I appeared so small and insignificant that perhaps my presence wouldn't actually matter in any way. My barn on wheels has gone stealth again, apparently.

Next year, when my daughter gets her driver's license, the van will be hers. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it's magnificently pre-disastered, and since she has the shortest commute it makes sense that she'll drive the car with the lowest gas mileage. And since it's a big van just loaded with airbags, if anything hits her (or, let's be realistic, if she hits anything) the chances for personal bodily damage are low. So it makes sense. On the other hand, with that thing being invisible the way that it is, the chances are more than good that at some point she will indeed have a collision of some kind with someone who just didn't know she was there. Good luck kiddo, you're going to need it.

Love, Spud.