Sometimes there are things in life you just take for granted and never really think about so you don’t have feelings about them one way or the other. I would say for most people the driver’s side mirror on your car would fall in that category. Today though I am very happy to have a functioning mirror back on my car.

On New Year’s Day I got woken up at 5:30 in the morning by a crashing noise, which I now suspect was someone driving home still drunk and hitting the mirror on the side of my car. They of course didn’t leave a note. The housing for the mirror was cracked though it wasn’t super noticeable. I probably would have just lived with it like that but the actual mirror no longer worked for me. I mean I don’t go out of my way keep my car super pristine. It’s a fool’s errand living in a city and parking on the street. I drove my last car for years with a dent in the front bumper where I hit something, and with dents in the side of it where a deer literally ran into the side of my car while I was driving on I-95. I would have driven my car around with a broken mirror housing for the next 10 years if the mirror was still functional.

Although the mirror itself wasn’t actually broken, something damaged the motor or whatever it is that allows the mirror to be repositioned. The mirror got stuck in a position that didn’t actually allow me to use it for its intended purpose. Trust me trying to parallel park, which I do every day, is not something you can easily do without a driver’s side mirror. I am super excited to finally be able to park while using my mirror again.

This was a $250 lesson in actually using the functionality of my mirror folding in so that no one hits and breaks it.