A Tale of Two Body Shops

No one was harmed in the writing of this blog. Or, fortunately, in the events that gave rise to this entry.

That is good news, since automobiles, as I know full well from my last job at the National Transportation Safety Board, can be two-ton weapons of destruction. Bumper cars are best left on the carnival fairway.

Yet, bumping into vehicles seems to be how I’m meeting people in our new town. The first incident was after my second-ever yoga class. I backed out of a diagonal parking space into an unsuspecting Nissan. The second close-encounter-of-the-car kind came two weeks later, when I was trying to get to a third yoga class. I’d missed a week when my husband’s recovery had a setback.  This time, I sideswiped a van of indeterminate make and model as I tried to park in front of the yoga studio.

After exchanging information with my poor-driving’s second victim, I drove home. Actually, I sobbed home. I have never been wracked with sobs. This was also the first time I’d hit two cars in two weeks.

But, with the convulsive sobs I knew that I had lost it.

I'd lost my prized resilience on the front of a Nissan and along the side of a van.

My daughter, the psychologist, offered this analysis: “Uncle Sigmund would say you’re feeling guilty about doing something for yourself.”

I think more than guilt about leaving my husband alone, I was on overload. Now I know that my stressors – retiring, moving, and caretaking – aren’t high up on the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory – but somehow those three combined that morning to exceed the sum of their stress-scale parts.

Instead of feeling guilty about doing something for myself, if Dr. Freud is on to something, I realized (with coaching from dear friends) that I should do more for myself. Perhaps the van owner, a personal trainer, knew this when he offered a creative way for me to make amends.

I could pay him a modest sum since his van is old or I could sign up for eight personal training sessions with him. With a body in worse shape than my car, I jumped at the silver lining in this story.

This week, the car went to one body shop and I went to another.  The car looks great. The trainer provided a workout tailored for my age, abilities, and physical issues. With a little custom bodywork, maybe I can look as good as the car.