Is a Car in a Parking Lot Worth More than One in a Bush?: Proof You’re Never Too Old to Do Something Stupid

I’ve been driving over forty years and have driven mainly manual transmission cars for at least the last thirty.

And I still managed to forget to set the parking brake.

Upsides:

• I wasn’t in the car (could also be viewed as a downside because if I’d been in the vehicle, I would have hit the brake).
• It was parked on a very slight incline – obvious downside being there was an incline at all.
• We have insurance … which includes rental car coverage while my car is being repaired.
• Nothing mechanical was affected (except a slight disaligning of the steering).
• The damage to the body could have been much, much worse.
• It’s always good to be reminded I’m not as smart as I think I am (though I could probably think of less expensive ways to be reminded).

Addendum: When I was writing this post, WordPress wouldn’t let me preview it, so I waited a day to do so before publishing. Sometime during that 24 hour period, they switched from “classic editor” (aka what we’re used to) to “block editor” to “improve user experience.” I’m rapidly coming to believe the phrase “improved user experience” is a catchphrase that really means a bunch of techies trying to show the rest of us how stupid we are. In this case, it’s a bit like when Microsoft “improved” Word to make it try to read our minds and format our writing how the program thinks we want it, the problem being that’s not necessarily how we wanted it.

My “improved user experience” added about thirty minutes to the time it’s taken to write and post this.

At least I got a bonus opportunity to reflect on my own fallibility … in case the car in the bushes wasn’t enough to remind me. <laughing>