My karma is blue and black and bruised. He’s taken one too many jabs to the head of late, and the punch-drunk stumbling is getting quite worrisome. I always try to stay positive, but it’d be decent of the Moirai to pull some strings (ba-dum ching) to help me out over here.
As I pulled into my driveway on Friday, all but salivating with anticipation for the weekend, my driver’s side window shattered. Exploded. Possibly imploded. Quit the lucrative career of being a whole window to take a new freelance job being one hundred thousand pieces of window.
The sound it made was unexpected. Not really anything like glass breaking, more like a cascade of dry rice being poured into an empty pan. A sprinkle of tickles bouncing off the concrete, door frame, my seat, my skin.
No rock or branch hit it, it hadn’t been cracked or damaged previously, it just broke for the sake of breaking. The window was nearly 10 years old, which in car-years is about 190 human-years.
I checked myself for cuts in the same way one might check for ticks, picking at any slight aberration in the normal pattern of my skin hoping to find no blood, and stood in my driveway, incredulous. I thought for sure I’d been hit by a stray bullet from a 7-11 hold-up gone wrong, or was the victim of some super secret sound wave technology fired in my general direction from the nearby Fort Meade. It took a good five minutes before I realized I was totally fine, if a bit paranoid and crazy.
My neighbors all saw this happen, and came over to check out the carnage. As they grabbed brooms and my wife went for the Shop-Vac, I picked through the pieces of glass, trying to make sense of what happened, and console my wallet as he cried about his inevitable injury.
Before they could even plug the vacuum in, I made everyone stop. I had an idea. How often in life do you get a pile of safety glass to play with?
Moral of the story: when life breaks your window and costs you hundreds of dollars for no reason, take pictures of beer.
Tagged: beertography, breaking, broken glass, broken window, car, car window, cuts, karma, mini, photography, safety dance, safety glass, scrapes, window, you can dance if you want to you can leave your friends behind
Literature and Libation 
Now THAT’s what I call a positive attitude! Hope your wallet didn’t suffer too much.
My insurance company was very helpful, so no, the damages were relatively minor. My wallet is still loathe to part with any of his contents though.
That Mean Old Tom is one Mean Tom, breaking your glass. But at least not your spirit.
To beer!
I really love the simultaneous complexity and simplicity of “To beer!”
Can we make that our warcry?
P.S. At least this was an excellent, excellent beer.
Lovely pictures, at least.
Oliver!! Great idea under trying circumstances and great photos!! Thanks for sharing, man;) Happy quaffing and window replacement!
Did your neighbors think you were crazy? Poor little Mini. Hope it didn’t have to suffer the indignity of being driver-side windowless for too long. I suspect that is the car equivalent of forgetting to wear pants to school.
sounds like exactly the right thing to do )
Reblogged this on Jamie Lynn Morgan and commented:
Love these photos!
Just don’t get any glass in the beer! That’ll really hurt the ol’ wallet (among other things).
You stole me idea for a beer photoshoot! Next time, I’m calling dibs on the blown out window effect!
So the window “just blew out” and you “just happened to think about taking pictures with broken glass”. I see…..
Where I live, driving around a car with one broken window seems to be a sign of some advanced street cred status. Apparently you just cover it up with plastic and duct tape, and then turn the radio up loud enough so that the sound waves from the speakers keep the wind from actually blowing the plastic back into the car. Apparently very low, very loud bass sounds work best.
Great pictures as always. I need to grab some MBC beer the next time I’m at the store.
Was not expecting that ending! I felt worried for you at the start and you made me LOL at the end.
Eek! Still no clue how that happened? Very very weird.
Re: the beer, Mean Old Tom is pretty rocking. Way to make the best out of a crappy situation!
Brilliant!
Love this. You crack me up…so to speak.