BMW? I'll hit that, thank you.

After the grueling Saturday move-in-marathon our day was far from over. We had to make a trip to IKEA (a store that takes about a month's worth of energy to navigate on the best of days) and we were both totally taken aback by the amount of people, who, like ourselves, thought a Saturday IKEA trip would be a good idea. There were pregnant women searching for nursery options, new city folk like us hoping to find cheap and space efficient furniture for new apartments, internationals galore speaking in so many languages and wearing so many improperly spelled English T-shirts that it made my eyes water, and, my favorite, a local Brooklyn kid who took a seat next to Alex and began to explain to him how he and his mom had taken this train to that train and so on and so forth and how he couldn't believe how many people were shopping at IKEA anyway. Like the kid said, "It's crazy, huh?"

Forhoja by IKEA 99.99$
and worth every penny. 

Our IKEA trip went fine despite the low energy and tired feet and we loaded our new purchases (some shelves, two area rugs, a kitchen counter/island, a coat hook, two lamps, and a few smaller odds-and-ins) into the now empty moving truck and started the relatively short drive back to our neck of the borough. 

We decided to be adventurous and instead of taking the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway back we took Clinton St. (not to be confused with Clinton Ave which is where our place is located). Clinton St. is a beautiful brownstone-tree-stroller-lined street that goes through Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill which are both swank and wealthier neighborhoods. As we were driving up this street in our large 16 ft. Budget moving truck we noticed a disturbance ahead. There was an ambulance parked in the street and the medics were apparently knocking on doors trying to find the person in need of help. One of the medics walked in front of our path and Alex expertly and calmly swerved to miss this civil-servant-pedestrian. Distracted by the swerve and the obviously missing injured or ill person, I wasn't paying much attention to the side of the street that we swerved into so when I heard a strange crunching noise followed closely by a man pushing a stroller staring at us with open-faced aghast shock I knew we had done something horrible. In the whole swerve-to-miss-the-medic-maneuver we had hit a car. Yup, our first NYC traffic accident. 

Alex and I looked at each other for just a short second with panic reflecting in both our eyes and then I hopped out of the truck to try and assess the damage and find the vehicle's owner. Unfortunately, by this time, the ambulance had realized it was on the wrong street entirely and the medics jumped back in and wanted to speed off to actually find and help the intended person. This meant  that I was on the sidewalk and Alex was in the truck which now needed to be moved so that the ambulance could redeem itself and go save a life. So, off went Alex and the moving truck. Off went the ambulance. And off went the man with the stroller who was still staring at me like I killed Lassie. 

This. Only Green. 

I walked to the side of the street to find the car we hit to look at the damage. And my heart stopped and didn't feel the need to start beating again for what felt like an hour. 

We had hit a BMW. 

A shiny and beautiful forrest green BMW SUV that was just parked on the street minding it's own business. I quickly began thanking our lucky stars, common sense, and bank accounts because we had opted to get full coverage on the truck. That would cover damage to a beautiful and new BMW, right?? RIGHT??

Then I noticed something spectacular. The BMW seemed fine except for the driver's side mirror which had the black frame hanging off and was pushed back. Well, that looked a lot better. Mirrors, even BMW mirrors, couldn't be that expensive to fix, surely. Looking around to see if anyone who seemed like a BMW owner was out on the street yet, I decided to go ahead and see if the mirror could still move. I pushed it back and saw that it wasn't actually broken at all. Thank goodness for whoever invented the hinge on the side mirror that allows it to be pushed in the wrong direction. I simply pushed it back in place and felt that I was brilliant. Back in the right place, I saw that now the only thing wrong with the mirror was the black frame that had popped off. Well, the judger-with-the-stoller was gone so I decided to see if I could just pop it back on. 

And you know what? I could. 

It was like putting the last piece into a very large, very shiny, and very expensive puzzle. It popped back in place with the most glorious and satisfactory sound and I knew we were home free. I double checked the side of the car, the back of the mirror, the tires, and just for good measure the plates. All fine. All clean and shiny and expensive without a Budget Truck smash mark anywhere. 

At this point, I saw the Budget Truck come rambling back down the very-absolute-center of the street (to avoid more BMW incidents) and as Alex slowed down I jumped in the cab smiling. I related the jigsaw triumph and we drove off laughing, breathing a sigh of relief, and only trembling very slightly from the absolute dread-to absolute relief sensation of it all. 

We hit a BMW. I fixed a BMW. 

We're real New Yorkers, now.