Well, it’s more like Fender Ripper-Offer, but that doesn’t roll off the tongue, does it?

I hurt my back two days ago, which I am going to pretend has nothing to do with the fact that I am now officially 39; and between that and the fact that Skywalker developed a 3 a.m. fever, I didn’t sleep much the night before last.

This means that Skywalker was stuck going to the chiropractor with me yesterday. On the way, I made a stupid but not serious miscalculation and got side-swiped by a passing construction trailer. The guy pulled over and I followed him, hating myself the whole way. Skywalker, thankfully, didn’t notice anything was wrong and kept telling me the story of how Darth Vader came about.

I got out of the car to look at the damage, which was limited to the fact that the whole front panel of Vaneschewitz was hanging off and you could see straight through to her washer fluid. I was kind of embarrassed for her, actually. Remember when cars had bumpers?

The guy I hit was all set to yell at me, he was defending himself by blaming me from the minute he got out of his truck. Why is this our first response after a car accident? I mean, clearly I was okay because I was up walking around, but dude, would it have killed you to ask? I’m staring at the van thinking, 30 seconds. I could’ve waited 30 seconds to get through traffic instead of rushing around and getting hit for no good reason.

So he’s explaining to me how this is all my fault and I can’t think what to do, because I know this already but that information doesn’t get me to the chiropractor or get my kid back home to bed, so I lift up Vanny’s sagging front and try to POP IT BACK ON. It’s plastic, so it should pop back on, right? Hmm…

“Can you help me?” I ask, and those are the magic words. He’s a construction guy or a landscape guy or something practical, and now I am speaking his language. Can this problem be solved? So he kneels down, blame forgotten, and tries my same approach. Then we try together. But it’s not popping back on and little chunks of gray plastic are hitting the pavement. It’s sort of gruesome and awful. I love that van. And I had a day planned today.

“Oh, there are pieces falling out,” he says, and I can see that he gets it now, because he might as well have said, “Oh, your leg is bleeding profusely.” I am trying hard not to cry. I have a rule about crying in front of strangers. And bosses. I’ve broken both, often, so I don’t know what it is I’m so worried about. I keep looking at the road ahead, trying to remember the distance from the parking lot we’re in to the chiropractor’s office, a gas station (did I mention I was almost out of gas?) or even the Starbucks across the street.

He looks in the back window. “Oh. And you have a kid in the car, too.”

Yeah, dude. I know most people use minivans to cart around portable orgies with sex and drugs and disco lights, but I use mine for hauling my kids. Go figure.

“Wait,” he says, and I can see that he’s torn between irritation that I’ve slowed him on his way to wherever he was hauling his equipment and sympathy at the realization that I am a real person and this ended much worse for me than for him. Then he utters the pass-phrase of manly men everywhere. “Let me get you a bungee cord.”

So, while I might wish he had done something more helpful (like talk me out of driving anywhere and asking if we needed a lift or a phone, or you know, NOTHING at all) I do appreciate in spirit that this man went to his truck, got a bright red bungee cord and strapped the front half of my car to the back half. The Beverly Hillbillies would’ve been proud. “That should hold long enough for you to get somewhere.”

I wasn’t even back in the van before he was gone; I can only assume his trailer was unscathed. Or that he likes it scathed. I hesitated only briefly, head beating softly on the steering wheel, before abandoning the relative safety of the shopping center parking lot for the open road, hoping to make it… somewhere. The dealership a few miles away? Maybe just to the chiropractor so I could get adjusted while I waited for a tow if it came to that. If I didn’t make it to the chiropractor, I knew there was a gas station a half mile up on the corner.

Um, yeah. I didn’t make it that far. Do you know what a huge plastic bumper sounds like as it scrapes the road repeatedly, threatening to fall off and be run over or possibly, I don’t know… melt? Skywalker and I do. It’s unnerving.

So it turns out the bungee cord was not the panacea we’d hoped and we found ourselves stranded in a tiny little subdivision a quarter mile away. I couldn’t reach Hubs and I hate, hate, hate feeling so helpless without him — even for a few minutes, and even though I knew he was too far away to be much help. That’s not the girl my Daddy raised. So I let myself cry in frustration for about 30 seconds, hugged Skywalker and told him he could relax and read his books. At least it was a beautiful day. Several phone calls and an hour of bored five-year old trapped in a car later, and we got to ride in the cab of a tow truck with the windows down while the truck driver told us about raising three boys on his own after a divorce. He gave Skywalker a lollipop and told him to listen to his mom before sending us on our way. I don’t want to jinx it, but I think maybe that made an impression because he was really well-behaved the rest of the morning.

Shuttling between the roadside and the repair shop, then the repair shop and the car rental place; waiting and then rushing and then waiting again; and moving the carseats from one car to the next to the next and feeling only slightly mortified at the number of crumbs and old Cheerios that fell out of one car seat every time anyone touched it; our morning was pretty much nonstop adventure. Our shuttle driver was from Glasgow and we managed to talk politics a little before he dropped us off.

“Did you know you’re on empty?” the collision guy said as he turned on the van to check the mileage. “Please tell me you were on your way to a gas station when this happened.”

“Did you know you don’t have rental car coverage?” The insurance guy said. “It would’ve been just a couple dollars a month.”

“Did you know you have a $1000 deductible?” The repairs are $1072, by the way.

So, okay. We didn’t knock it out of the park yesterday. I didn’t even make it to the chiropractor. And I prefer Vanischewitz with her front panel intact. But on the plus side, my back feels better. It turns out that bouncing up and down on a carseat with your hand wedged in the seat reaching for that damn LATCH clasp and saying my special magic car seat incantation (It goes “Fuckity Fucking Fuck Fuck” if you want to try it with your own car seat) is great for the lower back. And Skywalker was a major trooper the whole time, even though his nose was runny and he wanted to be home playing on the computer. And no one got hurt and we made it to pick up Fozzie on time with the rental car.

Plus, you know, free bungee cord. So there’s that.

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I’m M.J. (Manda) Pullen, an author and mom in the Atlanta, Georgia area. I blog about writing, publishing, motherhood, health, psychology and whatever else strikes me in the moment. Like construction trailers.

My books include The Marriage Pact series, a trilogy of funny, semi-realistic Contemporary Romance/Women’s Fiction novels coming Fall 2015 from Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Press in association with Macmillan Entertainment. If you enjoyed this entry, please follow along or join my email list.  Thanks for reading!

MJ Pullen

M.J. Pullen is a distracted writer and the mom of two boys in Roswell, Georgia, where she is absolutely late for something important right now. Her books include quirky romantic comedies and playful women's fiction. She blogs erratically with writing advice, random observations, and reflections on raising very loud kids and dogs. Join her Distracted Readers newsletter list for updates, free content, giveaways and more.