Wayward DP
Well-known member
if you insist.Reminder: tell us now.
so the start of the story is one morning I wake up, get in the car to take the dog to the park, and then realize that some asshole through a massive rock through my windshield overnight.
so I call insurance, get the car towed, and get set up with a rental (I named him Sheldon). this happened on a Thursday.
the following Monday, I'm under the impression that my vehicle (named Larry) would be ready for pickup the following day. per the terms of my insurance policy, once my vehicle is ready I have to return Sheldon or pay out of pocket to continue the rental. so I'm assuming that I will drive Sheldon to work Tuesday morning and then drop him off and pick up Larry sometime in the afternoon. I am pretty sure I had a client meeting or something that morning too.
anyhow, Monday evening I'm driving home, crossing the bridge, forget to hold my macpass up and hit the little toll gate (minor impact as I hit the brakes hard once I realized the gate wasn't lifting). the gate scratched up Sheldon's hood right good. but fuck me if I'm going to pay for the damage to Sheldon on top of my deductible for the broken windshield. then the other issue is that I don't really have any time to deal with the damage because I'm in the office early the next day and the car is due back that afternoon. and I got home well after dark on the Monday night.
so after some googling and talking to friends, I decide to test out using toothpaste to buff Sheldon's hood. fortunately I had toothpaste with whitening in it on hand, which is apparently the best for this kinda thing. anyhow, I spent at least a good half hour outside in my driveway in the dark using my headlamp, toothpaste, and some microfibre rags to try and buff the damage out of Sheldon's hood. I can only imagine what the neighbours thought.
on at least two occasions I thought I had removed the damage only for further rinsing/inspection to reveal that I had in fact missed/overlooked some spots. I was also running in and out of the house this whole time filling water bottles to help rinse.
then to add insult to injury it turns out that Larry was not ready for pickup on Tuesday and would not be ready until Thursday. so instead of spending a frantic evening in the dark buffing out Sheldon on Monday night, I could have done it at any point Tuesday or Wednesday in the daylight. fortunately though it ended up raining the morning I returned Sheldon which further obscured any residual damage to his hood.
the story ends with me successfully returning Sheldon and the damage going completely undetected. and Larry has a new windshield.