This story starts well before the mechanic involvement.
I was asked if I would be willing to drop a meal off for one of our parishioners who is in-home hospice care. Now we love Dottie and Dave. For those people I love, I make a chicken pot pie nearly from scratch. (I cheat on the crust.)
I made the pot pie. K and I went to deliver it. It was during the polar vortex.
Their driveway is a typical driveway for around here-- with a few twists. It is narrow (that is the typical part) with a telephone pole at the corner and on the devil strip, and landscape block on the other corner plus a driveway with a hill. Out of habit of driving stick, I pulled the emergency brake on the hill.
Something let go.
Despite my small heart attack, we went, visited, delivered said pie and went on. I phoned the mechanic, brought it in the next day and replacement parts were ordered. It took about a week for the parts to arrive and between that and my schedule, I was able to make an appointment on Valentine's Day morning for the fix. It would be three hours, but no problem. I'll just hang out.
It's a two man shop. Nothing fancy. I was sitting in their lil waiting room, shop cat begging for affection and the shop owner even turned Golden Girls on for me. (I have no idea why that show, but it was thoughtful for him to do it.)
Then I heard what sounded like a sheet of plywood hitting a concrete floor. There was no yelling. There was no running. I ignored it and went on with reading my phone.
Then the shop owner came in and mentioned something about an airbag. I went. I looked. It looked like the airbag at my drivers side window went off and hey, that sucks but it's fixable.
The mechanic came out. R asked how he was and he mentioned something about his back. I had him pull up his shirt and he had an enormous welt that spanned the width of his back from where he got hit by the airbag. And then . . .
. . . I found out that the side curtain airbags went off, both sides, all the way down.
:deep breath:
In the going back and forth with their insurance company, we were given a choice-- fix it or total it out. We opted to total it.
Our totaled vehicle was a much beloved (by me) 2008 Toyota RAV4. Now, she was a replacement to a previous RAV total. I loved her, but she kicked and screamed nearly the entire time we owned her. Almost a secret abusive relationship in regard to a vehicle and owner. Sometimes damage would whisper. Sometimes damage would thunk and scream. Either way, as much as I loved her we knew that if we kept it, we would have continued problems, it would be tagged as airbags deployed, no one would buy it and frankly, we were offered a total out price that we could not get in a standard sale situation.
Rather than scream and yell, sue the shop and smear their name all over the internet, we opted to show grace.
Rather than berate the mechanic who, in a fine detail that should be said is also my cousin, we showed grace.
Hugs instead of giving the silent treatment. We opted to show grace.
My husband and I talked about this as a God intervention. No one was seriously injured. A welt was it. We all screw up with our jobs. I'm not perfect. My husband isn't perfect. This was an imperfect day for the mechanic. He, in working on my parking brake, accidentally bumped the side curtain airbag sensor and that (I believe) my vehicle read as a rollover.
He is a certified mechanic.
He works at a certified shop.
It is a Christian shop.
They had insurance.
We were able to find (thanks to the internet) a 2013 Subaru Forester at a dealership up around Cleveland. In what turned out to be a whirlwind car buying experience, we were loaned the vehicle to have our mechanic (yes, the same shop who brought us to the need for replacement) inspect it, we stopped by a local Subaru dealership and went on to purchase it. She reminds us of our old RAV, but with some thoughtful upgrade features that Subaru has added. (Hello, heated seats!) We will now have a small car payment, but I plan on paying it off in three years still making it a payment that we can absorb.
We wouldn't have been able to replace our ailing RAV without this mishap. Instead of being mad, we look at it as a way God helped us to be able to upgrade a vehicle that otherwise was going to swallow us.
We look at it with thanks and grace.
No comments:
Post a Comment