Saturday morning, when Pete was driving me to a women’s retreat day, an out-of-towner spotted a Wendy’s out of the corner of his eye and all his Pavlovian reflexes kicked in. He wheeled toward the beckoning drive-thru entrance and apparently ignored the fact that our Prius was momentarily blocking it.

As we careened to the right, my first thought was: Someone in that vehicle had a heart attack. Or a seizure. Or is drunk.

But the guy wasn’t drunk, just hungry. We followed the guy into Wendy’s and called the cops. He admitted fault (rightly so, I might add) and was issued a citation. (Which sounds like a reward. Like: A citation for excellence!) Then the hijinks began. The insurance company doesn’t work directly with the Toyota dealer, but we weren’t willing to go elsewhere because of the whole hybrid thing. That meant a few extra days of waiting, since a claims agent would need to come out for an assessment. Remember, we’re a one-car family.

Metal was scraping the pavement as we drove, so we wanted a rental car ASAP. So we parked the car at the Toyota place and put our keys in the after-hours box for the body shop. Then we waited for a pickup from the rental place. Somehow it took another hour before we were able to drive away in the shiny Jetta we rented. That’s how I happened to be three hours late for the retreat. Lunch was good.

The Jetta has many bells and whistles that our own car lacks. It’s always beeping and buzzing because of something or other. Peter immediately found all the hidden cubbies and figured out how to program the radio. He and Moon like the extra leg room, but we’re all a little irritated by how complex the locks seem to be. I miss our little green machine.

We’re getting a check from our insurance company, but we still have to pay the $500 deductible. Then I guess the two insurance companies have to duke it out. (At least the guy was insured.) Apparently, there’s this shared-fault thing going on in Wisconsin, so our insurance guy thinks it’s unlikely that our erratically-driving Wendy’s fan will be responsible for 100% of the damages.

“But what about the police report?” you may ask. According to our agent, “Sometimes they take that into consideration.” To that, I say: WTF?

Ironically, the guy drove off without even getting anything to eat.