Sunday, March 16, 2008

A Sunday Morning Incident.

When we pulled back onto our street from church this afternoon we saw three vehicles parked in front of our home. One was parked in our driveway, and a group of about half a dozen people were mulling about. "This can't be good" The Man muttered. "I wonder what's going on."

As we pulled up in front of our home we saw this: Do you see that brick square at the bottom of the picture? That's where our mailbox used to stand. Apparently a teenage girl was driving home from her friend's house this morning, fell asleep at the wheel, and plowed into it. They had cleared the debris all out of the street and off of the sidewalk and were waiting for us to return.

When we got out of our car the girl came up to us, her face stained with tears, and apologized to us profusely. I couldn't help but give her a hug. Poor thing. Then we talked to her parents. Apparently she had just been in a wreck a couple months ago and they didn't want to claim this accident on their insurance for fear that they would cancel their policy. So we exchanged information. The cost to replace our mailbox. Approximately $1000. The cost to repair their truck. They guestimated at least $4000.

Oy.
Here's the girl helping her family, The Man, Brandon, and some of our neighbors load the bricks into the back of their truck. They seemed like very nice people. Nice. Broke. People.

Suddenly, even having Brandon drive at seventeen seems to soon.

11 comments:

Lynn Stallworth said...

Oh the poor girl! I can't imagine how mortified she must have been! Maybe a nice pole or wood mounted mailbox would do? Although the brick ones are nice. We've thought about building one at our house but every time we analyze the cost we're like..."nah." She's going to have a hard time convincing her parents to let her drive again. Their poor truck as well! YIKES!

Chaotic Joy said...

Lynn, Everyone in our neighborhood has mailboxes to match the front of our house, (Stucco for stucco. Brick for brick etc.) so it's not an option for us to have the only mailbox that is not. In fact, if you take into account this post , a wood post mailbox might just get us driven out of the neighborhood with torches. Hee hee.

Chrissy said...

Oh, poor kid. And poorer parents. I'm glad no one got hurt. This makes all of my complaining about toddler tantrums seem so minor. The teenage years seem so much scarier.

Lynn Stallworth said...

Awww, jeeezzzz, you just gotta love HOA's sometimes! That's too bad for her, too. Not just that it's more expensive to fix, but that should she fall asleep again and hit another mailbox-that would be another $1000 for the box and another $4000 in vehicle damage. Those darn brick or stucco mailboxes just don't budge as well-ROFL! There are a couple positives-#1-you or anyone in your family didn't do it and therefore someone else has to cover the cost to fix it and #2-your neighbors got to see that your son DOES wear clothes! LOL! And I suppose everyone can thank God there wasn't a child (yours or anyone else's) out there at the time that could have gotten seriously hurt or killed. Scary!

flutter said...

I feel bad for her, but maybe she doesn't need to be driving for awhile....

Lori said...

Oh dear.... What could you do at that point but give her a hug? The consequences were right there in front of her and will probably keep coming for some time.

Thank the Lord that no one got hurt!

Yeah. Seventeen sounds too soon.

Wendy said...

Good for her (and her parents) for taking the consequences instead of just hoping nobody saw it. I think I'd make her wait a while before driving again, though.

Unknown said...

how lucky for her that you were coming back from church! yeah, i'd say she'd (and the other drivers/objects around her) would be better off waiting a few more years before attempting the wheel again. i'm not quite sure how you fall asleep on a neighborhood road? hmm....

Unknown said...

and good thing your mailbox was brick or she may have slept all the way into your house!

karen said...

Well, I've been a bit worried about how you guys fared during the tornado storms there...but I'm guessing I can rest easy on the weather damage front, since it took an errant driver to mess up your mailbox!

Kyla said...

Oh no. This happened to Josh once in high school, too, except it was a wooden mailbox and the ride ended when he wrapped his car around a telephone pole. Eeek. Pretty scary stuff.