Bumblebee's Last Ride?

Back in 2013, I got a little Fiat 500 to use on my interminable commute to work. If you listen to That Gets My Goat, then you've surely heard Rish complain mightily about the car and its diminutive stature.

And he's right, it's tiny. I mean look at the thing. I don't think a person was ever meant to dwarf a car, and yet that's pretty much what I'm doing in that picture. But, that's what the whole point of the car was. I needed it to get to work, a drive which I made alone, and I wanted it to save me money on gas. So, you get a little car that doesn't weigh much, and the gas will be almost negligible.

So, I just ignored Rish's complaints, and, as Americans tend to do, I grew to love my car. It was so nimble and maneuverable. I could park in any spot without the slightest trouble. I could turn on a dime. My son, a Top Gear-watching car snob, originally disdained the car too. Top Gear had taught him that only sports cars were cool. But then he grew old enough to drive, and learned to drive on the Dodge Durango that we'd gotten for the kids to use. It wasn't long before he realized how much better it was to drive my little Fiat compared to the lumbering SUV, and his opinion changed somewhat.

Since the car was so small, I decided that I would name it Bumblebee. I have started naming a lot of my inanimate possessions...after Transformers. It started with my first computer, which I named Megatron (I wanted to name it Optimus Prime, but Windows wouldn't give me enough characters to do so). I named my thumb drives, my external hard drives, my whole family's phones, and then, finally this car. I named her Bumblebee because she was so small, and that was Bumblebee's claim to fame, the smallest and frailest of the Autobots (until Michael Bay screwed him up casting him as a Camaro).

So, last night, I was about to turn left into a parking lot that contained a restaurant that my wife and I were going to eat at. There was a guy in a Ford F-150 in front of us in line to turn, and, while I was looking to the left at the turn I was about to make, the guy started backing up toward us. He had realized that he had gone a little too far, and was probably not going to be able to get his behemoth of a truck to make that turn. So, he looked in his rearview and side mirrors, and saw nothing there. So, he backed up.

But there was something there. It was my little midget of a Fiat named Bumblebee. When he started backing toward us, my wife saw it and started screaming. I looked, saw what was coming, and tried to shift into reverse to get out of his way, but, in my painic, I fumbled around uselessly, failing to shift into anything. As a last ditch effort, I tried to honk my horn to warn him. I hit the horn at about the same moment he hit me.

It was a pretty tame accident as far accidents go. The guy was probably doing five miles an hour or so when he connected with my bumper. But, the size differential between the cars made all the difference.

I took this picture right after the accident. Can't see much because of the darkness.

These pictures I took the next morning:

You still can't see it that well for some reason. I should probably take some pics with the hood open so you can tell how the front caved in better. But even then, it didn't cave in that much.

It's pretty minimal damage, really. The car still drives, and the damage doesn't seem to make any difference to its performance. It just looks a little worse for wear.

I worry, however, that, all the same, this may have been Bumblebee's last ride. I've been in accidents that involved much smaller damage than even this one before, and it cost enough to fix it that the insurance agency totaled the car instead of paying to fix it. It really doesn't seem to take that much. I suppose I could buy a new car if that happens, but I'd miss Bumblebee. I love that girl. I'd be sad to see her go.