During my lifetime, bumpers used to be made of durable metal. You could hit all kinds of things and never damage the bumper on the car. Today car bumpers are merely tools used to hide the nuts and bolts. They are easily damaged and expensive to replace.

That’s my car pictured above. Notice the bumper. It has been crunched for over a year now. I am apparently going to drive this car for the remainder of its days with a crunched bumper. I know, I know, the car has almost 290 thousand miles on it and has been in numerous accidents and it’s starting to show its age. Up until about 2 years ago my husband kept a spare bumper in the shed. He probably kept the spare bumper through 3 accidents before deciding it was a waste of money. That’s why I now drive the car with that ugly bumper.

This last bumper was damaged when I was leaving a house. At the end of the driveway the family had fashioned a small platform out of concrete blocks. They were just stacked up and the intention was to have a tall container of flowers placed on the blocks. At the time I was at their house, they had not yet gotten the flowers out there. You can probably picture this in your mind. As I was backing out of the driveway, I could not see the blocks. I did, however, feel the impact as I backed right into them. Jumping out of my car, I ran back to look at my bumper while hoping that nothing happened. Upon seeing the crunch, I just turned to get back into the car. I didn’t even want to call and tell my husband that yet another bumper was dead.

The moral of the story? If you happen to see me driving around, you might not want to be where I could back into you!