Update: Results are in the extended entry.

Want to know what it's about? See the Shamming/Sharing intro post.

Is this anecdote a sham or a share?

I wasn't always the sober and responsible person y'all know today. In my foolish youth I was quite a bit...wilder. No, that doesn't quite gather the feeling I'm looking for. I was more...reckless. No, that's not it either. Stupid! That's it! I was remarkably stupid.

For example, one evening out on the icy streets of Buffalo I lost control of my vehicle (it was a Chevette!) and crashed into a guard rail. That's not the stupid part - this sort of thing is an accepted part of living in Buffalo. I crushed my front left quarterpanel and snapped my front left spring in half. I took my tire iron out and pounded the folded metal out of the way, enlisted some friendly neighborhood types to get out of the snowbank and went on my merry way. That's not the stupid part either. You don't spend money to tow a winter beater car when you don't have to and half a front spring is still more than enough anyway. I drove it like that for the rest of the winter.

Very early that spring my step bro and I spent two entire days rebuilding that front end. I got a new panel from a junkyard, he found the spring really cheap somewhere, I got new rotors and calipers on sale (those weren't related to the crash damage) and we went to town. It was a bitch and a half. We didn't quite have the correct tools so we were doing crazy things like using a rope pulley for the wheel pulley (they're both pulley's, right?) and hammers and wedges where hammers and wedges have no business being and some rigged up contraption to compress the spring. This wasn't the stupid part either, though it probably would have qualified if that spring had let go.

The stupid part came about a week after that monumental effort of car fixing. After a night out with the lads I had a drop or fifty too much beverage in me and I spun out on the bridge near our house ("bridge surface may freeze before road" - those signs tell the truth). As the laws of karma demanded, the corner of the car that smashed into the guardrail was of course the same corner we had so recently spent pain, blood and tears fixing.

Current Standings:

Two Correct
jim
Mike the Marine

One Correct
Brian Jones
Helen
Jeremy
mitzi
MojoMark
Mutinousdoug
Rob
Simon
Sue
Susie
Tiffani

Zero Correct
Everybody else

RESULTS:

This was a big fat lie. The repair I described did actually happen. Yes, even the busted spring. mitzi's right that it's very difficult to bust a spring but this was a winter beater car in Buffalo. Anything on that car could have been busted in any sort of accident.

But, the rest of it was bogus. The original damage came on that bridge I described for the repeat performance. No alcohol was involved ever and once that sucker was reparied it stayed repaired until I got rid of the car a year or so later.

A new sham/share will be going up shortly.