Shame

Yesterday I did something utterly humiliating, and today I had to own up to it.

Let me begin by describing Sam's truck. He bought it to go out to Colorado and live wild and free, and he has driven it all over the country, used it to haul building materials for our house, and even moved my whole houseful of belongings to our current house. It is a symbol of his freedom, and maybe some sense of masculine capability.

More to the point, however, it has a full 4-seat cab, so it's kind of like an SUV with a 6-foot bed for the cargo area. It's very tall and long and wide and presents an impossible driving challenge for one, like me, who is decidedly ungifted in the area of spatial relations. I got it stuck once at school last winter when I parked next to a flagpole and someone parked really close to me on the other side, and I couldn't get it pulled out of the parking space without the flagpole cable thwumping and thwacking against the underside of the truck as I essentially drove over it. It was horrible. Even that maneuver required my pleading for spotting help from a random construction guy working nearby.

And so, perhaps it should come as no surprise that yesterday, when the street guys were working to repair the sidewalks on our street and I had to drive the truck to take Gillian to the pediatrician, I ended up backing the truck through the wet cement. But it was totally humiliating because . . . the sidewalk does not actually cross our driveway. And the piece of sidewalk with a 6-inch deep tire track permanently embedded in it is not, technically, even on our property. Yes, I was so far off our driveway that I backed it over the neighbor's sidewalk.

This morning, the sidewalk guys came back out to finish working on the rest of the street, and I could see them huddled over the patch of sidewalk that I had laid waste to, and I was so, so ashamed. I could barely bring myself to do it, but I did manage to get my rear end out there to apologize. They clearly were not delighted that their work had to be cut out with huge saws and replaced, but they guy was also kind of amused when I presented him with my abject apologies. "We'll take care of it," he said gruffly, "but stay out of the truck."