It's Not My Fault I Ran Over a Rake
A garden rake that didn’t have the right of way appeared in front of my car and blew out my right front tire.
My wife was patient and understanding.
“What on earth did you do now?”
“The kids left a rake on the driveway,” I said, scanning to make sure they were not around to tell her it was me.
It could have been how my wife colored her words, squinted her eyes, or balled her hands into fists, but something told me she wasn’t convinced.
“That’s your story?” she inquired. “Our children decided on their own, without any prompting, to do yardwork?”
“Maybe they were playing a game.”
“What game?”
“Cops and landscapers.”
She gave me a look I recognized. It was the look I got when I ran over the tricycle—one of complete skepticism, as though my accident reconstruction diagrams carried no weight at all. I switched tactics.
“Somebody else could have dropped it.”
“Like who?”
“Girl scouts. They’re always coming around.”
“To sell cookies.”
“And gardening supplies. There’s a new merit badge in mulch.”
My wife wasn’t buying it. I could tell that going through her mind was the time our babysitter’s car door came out of nowhere and slammed into my rear bumper.
“Fixing it will cost $900,” my wife had said at the time.
“$900? That’s crazy!” I reasoned. “The whole beater itself isn’t worth $900.”
“You think?”
“Not with that huge dent in the door.”
I returned my wife to the present discourse. I had come up with something more plausible.
“Erosion.”
“Erosion?”
“Yes. We’ve had a lot of rain lately. It washed away the concrete to reveal the buried past. True, this time it turned up a rake. But next time it might be a mammoth.”
She raised a doubtful eyebrow.
“Would you believe it was dropped by a witch? They’ve moved on from broomsticks.”
She raised the eyebrow higher.
“Or by an angry mob? They’ve tired of pitchforks.”
She raised the eyebrow to a height I would not have thought anatomically possible. I went on.
“Don’t we have to teach the kids a lesson about not leaving things out on the driveway? That’s how stuff gets broken.”
“By you.”
“Possessions are fleeting. Besides, I was on the tines of an ethical dilemma. I had to make a split-second decision. It was either drive over the rake or take out the geranium. How does one measure the cost of a tire against the life of a geranium? It was an impossible choice.”
My wife did not appreciate the philosophical implications.
“The rake tore up the underside of the car. We’ll need a tow,” she said.
“The car needed new tires anyway.”
“And brake fluid. And antifreeze. And oil. It’s all leaking.”
“Are you interning at the mechanic?”
Eyebrow.
“Some things are out of our hands,” I said, gazing up to the heavens. “We must learn to accept what we cannot control.”
“You’re saying you were destined to run over a rake?”
“I cannot fight fate.”