The first such event happened to my car. My 'everyday' car is a '08 Chevy Malibu, which I pretty much use just to drive to work and to run errands if Mike is working. I work as a pharmacist in a department store and therefore park my car close to the back of the lot. In part I do this because I have to, but I also like to keep it far enough away so that I might avoid unattended shopping carts scratching it up. Well, after a 10-hour shift one week I leave to get into my car (which is parked all by itself in the back of the lot, as usual) and see that a note has been left on the windshield. It basically is apologizing because somebody's daughter, a new driver, pulled too far into the parking spot directly behind me and dented my rear fender. Fantastic! My once flawless Malibu now has a suspicious-looking dent right by the license plate. I considered myself lucky in this day and age that someone was courteous enough to even leave a note, because as you're about to find out, most people don't.
The second incident happened to Mike's everyday car, a 2011 KIA Sorento. I'm a huge fan of this car, and we bought it brand new in April of 2011. He takes meticulous care of it, so he noticed right away when a mysterious dent appeared above the passenger rear tire. Mind you, this tire is tall enough to reach my mid-thigh, so this dent is several feet off the ground. No note was left behind to explain it, and it could have only happened when the car was (again) left unattended in a parking lot. To get it fixed involved removing several of the exterior panels, including the rear panel, part of the roof, and the passenger side rear door.
Unfortunately, the remaining incidents involve my beautiful Corvette. As much as I hate to have anything happen to any of the cars, I'd much rather they happen to the KIA or the Malibu, as they are much easier and less costly to have repaired. But if I didn't have bad luck I wouldn't have any at all, so as Fate would have it, tragedy seems to strike the Vette most often.
Most incidents have come from close-calls on the road. We live in an area that is undergoing heavy road construction, and it is my firm believe that even the best drivers act like complete jack-asses in construction zones. People don't read signs, don't pay attention, don't check their mirrors, and in general seem unaware that they are not alone on the road. We were cruising along down a road which had been reduced to a one-way street one day and we were in the far left lane, about to pass a car on our right. Suddenly, without warning (and of course without a turn signal) the car in the right hand lane made an abrupt, 90-degree left-hand turn right in front of us! We slammed on the brakes and the tires screamed. I remember the whole thing like it was in slow motion, seeing us coming at that car and truly believing that we weren't going to be able to stop in time. I could smell rubber, the tires were smoking against the pavement, and I thought in my head of how I would run this guy down and beat his ass if he crunched up my Stella-baby (and this was only a few short weeks after purchasing her). Luckily, the dumbass completed his turn into the parking lot on our left just in time and we missed him by a narrow margin.
Mostly impressively, the following week I was coming home from work when Mike called me to warn me that a 'minor accident' had occurred with the Corvette. This was after all the above had happened, so I was immediately freaked out and demanded to know what had gone down. Apparently Mike had been driving the Vette down some backstreets (because he thought that would be 'safer,' heh) when a deer jumping over the car. Did you catch that? In broad daylight, a deer jumped over my Corvette! And I don't just mean it jumped over the edge of the fender or something, I mean it honest-to-God leaped over the top like a damn reindeer. The antennae on the rear fender caught its under-belly as Stella passed underneath, and of course pulled it out of the fiberglass enough to leave a few small hair-line cracks in an otherwise flawless body.
And then of course the engine broke down. >_<
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