Car troubles... revisited

Is it not enough that I ding my Dad's car after I dinged my Dad's car two months before - for which he has decided to rent a car (for which I have to pay, in addition to the car repairs) over the ten day period while his perfectly-drivable, if somewhat blemished, car is waiting at the panelbeater's for panelling, that I have a pregnancy scare (relief: all in my head), a dreaded upcoming work performance review, etc etc?

Well, let me answer that not-so-rhetorical question for you: no no, resounding NO!

Picture the scene: Saturday morning (11:30 to be precise), I'm panicking because I've booked buffet lunch at Standloper's for 12:00 - in not-so-next-door Langebaan an hour away - but my friends have not yet showed up at my house. To speed things up a bit when they arrive, I decide to rearrange the cars in the driveway so we can make a quick getaway when their lazy asses eventually arrive (can you see where this is heading???)

I say to my boss - yes, that's right, the man who pays me the salary I spend on car parts each month - now picture this in slowmo - "caaaaan i moooove yoooour reeeentaallllll caaaarrrr ooouuut oooofffff theee driiiiiivewaaaaaay?" "Suuuuuurrre, the keeeeeyyys aaaaare oooooon the taaaaablllllle." "heeeeheeeeee.... doooo yoooooou truuuuuuust meeeee aaaaafter mmmmmyyyyy aaaaaaccccident laaaast weeeeeek in mmmmyyyyy Daaaaad's caaaar?" I sickeningly joked.

Murphy, of course, was eavesdropping. This was too good an opportunity to miss, and the joke clearly ended up being on me.

So, out I go, rental car keys in hand, jump into the rental, and happily reverse it a mere 4 metres down the driveway, into the gate standing a mere 4.00001 metres down the driveway. Shhhhhiiiitttt! I pulled forward, parked, jumped out, checked the bumper and saw no marks. Relieved, I thought I'd touched it so lightly that no evidence was visible. Until I moved around the side of the car, where a nice scratch and dent nestled between the bumper and the side panel on the right-hand side of the car. Panic took over, I went inside and said nothing to my boss about the incident.

When my friends arrived, we drove through to lunch, and I sat for a long agonising hour at the back of the car, dying to release my guilt to someone (but couldn't, because one of my colleagues - the boss's favourite - was in the car with us). When we got there, through furtive whispers, I admitted my evil evil deed, to which one friend says "Don't say anything - it's his fault if he rents a car without taking out insurance" (can you believe this man took the Hippocratic Oath?), while the other says "I'm sure he'll understand."

That evening, the single moral person in my life - my boyfriend - says I have to admit what I did, and accept that I'll have to pay for the damage. (I ran the idea past him that I should add a cross on the little piece of paper they give you showing where existing scratches on the car are when you first rent it, but he thought this was a particularly stupid immoral thing to do.) So.... now, not only have I dinged my boss's car, but I have failed to mention it to him. (What cruel cruel things did I do in my past life?)

Naturally, being the conniving wench that I am, I came up with a story to make the confession a little easier. Saturday night, when I eventually get home, the boss and the favourite are sitting on the couch watching tv. I run in, looking startled and nervous, and tell him more or less what happened, except that I didn't find a scratch on the car until I got back that evening and my car headlights picked it up. He was surprisingly chilled about the whole event, and seems to think the rental company won't notice the scratch (as if!), and says we'll deal with the problem if (when) it eventually arises.

So... this is the third time this year I've dinged a car, none of which were my own, and all of which occurred in parking areas. It's people like me that give women drivers a bad name, isn't it?

All this has distracted me from posting what I really need to post about - my last few days in Cape Town! That's tomorrow's work.