Mental Note: Stop Borrowing Wonder Woman's Car

I was sitting in my 1998 Saturn SL1, eating Freedom Fries, listening to Left of the Stein Radio (this is a sort of endurance test for me). The car was parked in a Starbuck’s parking lot, normally a Safe Place for 3XHAR. But not this day… oh no, not this day. About 20-25 feet away I saw an SUV’s back-up lights go on. And back-up he did. Fifteen, ten, five feet away. At ten feet I was thinking, ‘OK, now he’ll put it in drive and pull into that space to his left.’ At five feet I was thinking, ‘Does he see me?’ At zero-feet we had contact, and I was thinking, ‘What the [expletive deleted]?’

The guy hops out and states that the accident is all his fault. Then he says, ‘I looked and you weren’t there and then you were there and I hit you!’ I reminded my new acquaintance that my car was stationary the whole time, I was parked, my car had not moved, his car had been in motion, in reverse and had hit my inert, non-moving vehicle. ‘Oh,’ he stated, ‘Yeah.’ $656.38 in damages. New headlight, new bumper.

This would be a pretty generic minor accident tale, except for this: my car is invisible. You see, this is not the first accident I’ve had the pleasure of participating in. My car was hit in the parking lot while I was at the Come Back In enjoying a very rainy Stein Night. I couldn’t see the damage on account of the night and the rain. And I couldn’t read the note someone had left on the windshield, again, on account of the rain. Basically, someone hit my car, dented the door and left the scene!

The second time my car was hit was a few years ago on my birthday. Again, I was stationary and again some guy hit me, apologized and mentioned that he had looked and I had not been there! This was especially memorable because it was my birthday and because Lis hopped out of the car and accosted the bad driver with, ‘So, you weren’t looking, or what?’ HARHARHAR! That Lis, she kills me!

And now this other guy hits me at Starbucks. Being a tool using, pattern recognizing primate (An intelligently designed primate? I think not.) I have deduced two opposing theories:

1) My car is invisible. Strangely, several years of testing seem to support this theory.
2) There are drivers out there who, in rain or sunshine, are inept enough to hit a stationary car. Now, I like to think the best of folks, so I’m going to stick to my invisible car theory and go on believing that people are basically good and smart and responsible.

I mean, what else is a moderate Libertarian to do? If I don’t believe that people can basically take care of themselves, be responsible for their own behavior and make good cost/benefit decisions, then I’d have to give into some kind of liberal noblesse oblige paternalism. Nope. My car is invisible.