The Dragon is Injured

My siblings and I all drove a 1997 Corrolla throughout high school and into college. It's a great little car, and because it's metallic green, I took to calling it the Dragon Wagon. Jennie calls it the Green Beauty.

Over the years, it's had several injuries. There was the time I hit the mailbox, the time Donnie hit the garage, the time Donnie got rear-ended, the time Donnie dropped a penny into the steering wheel and the car would honk every time he turned, the time the sunroof stopped working in a wide-open position, the time Jennie got rear-ended, the time I rear-ended someone (with no damage to either car), the time I got a flat tire on 18 in the snow, and every time we parallel-parked it at UK there was reason for worry. It has seen 2 speeding tickets and one or two pull-over with no tickets. (There are no stories about Stephen because he mostly drove trucks. Which he wrecked, and his roommates also wrecked -- a story that will go down in family lore, but I won't recount here in order to preserve my dad's blood pressure.)

But today the dragon was injured by an outside force.

Someone threw a rock through the passenger window.

My sister, who drives the car now, calls the rock a boulder. The last time I talked to her, she was waiting for the police to call her back so she could make a report over the phone (?).

In any regard, there is glass everywhere and the window is broken into a million pieces. The rock is in the back seat on the floor. We can't figure out how it got there.

As of this afternoon, there didn't seem to be anything stolen (although she hadn't checked the glove compartment or the trunk). She actually hadn't been in the car, as she was afraid of getting cut by the glass. Stephen was on his way over to tape some plastic over the window, although he worried that he shouldn't be around should insurance agents show up and start twitching at the sight of him with glee and anticipation of many more dollar signs.

Poor Dragon. And poor Jennie, who was very upset at the vandalism. Her car was between her roommates' cars, and neither one of their cars were injured. We're hoping that it was a stupid drunk prank or that someone was so jealous of the Green Beauty's beauty that they couldn't stand it, but it's never fun to feel a little less safe in your own driveway.

Even so, we have great hopes that the Dragon will come through this. But it's an old car, and it's seen a lot of tomfoolery already.

We'll keep our fingers crossed for it.