Guide to Totaling Your Girlfriend’s Brand New Car

First of all, are you ok? Is everybody ok? That’s the important thing. That everybody is ok.

This is one hundred percent true, and if everybody is ok, that’s what you’ll be hearing a lot from the people in your life who care about you, and whose brand new cars you did not just wreck. It will not make you feel any better. It’s like saying “at least you didn’t just total your girlfriend’s brand new car” to somebody else who’s busy complaining about their problems. It doesn’t make their problems go away, all it does is annoy them about how you’re not listening as they continue their story about how long they had to wait for the bus. But it’s still true. At least everybody is ok.

But… Let’s say everybody is not ok. Let’s say somebody got pretty hurt. Let’s say you get pretty hurt. Or even just a little bit hurt. That’s going to make things worse from a logistical standpoint because you’ll have to deal with a hospital and a police report and auto insurance stuff and what to do with the car and a girlfriend who is going nuts and figuring what you’re going to do now and how you’re going to get to work on Monday when all the rental car places are sold out because it’s Christmas, plus the severe emotional and financial trauma of having to deal with all of that stuff at once. It’s still pretty bad if you’re not in the hospital.

So if you’re in the hospital, you can console yourself with this: at least nobody’s expecting you to be the point person for that whole nightmare. You get to lay down in a hospital bed and have Vicodin pumped directly into your veins while everybody else runs around like maniacs trying to solve all your problems for you, and instead of yelling at you, they're asking you if you want a soda. It’s maybe a little better that way. You don’t have to be a hero. And why should you? You deserve the rest.

I’m saying this as a person who emerged without a scratch from wrecking his girlfriend’s car. Of course she’s going to be more worried about you than her car, but the car is a close fucking second. Just know that if you call after the accident and say “before you ask, everybody’s ok,” and then she immediately starts screaming at you, I think that’s normal. If I had it to do over again, and I hate that I’m thinking this way about it, I would have let her worry about me for at least like a second or two before I volunteered to tell her that I was ok. If she was more worried about me than the car for a second or two, I would probably have had less screaming and strife to deal with by virtue of the fact that her initial reaction involved a certain amount of relief. Maybe I could have said “I’m a little banged up, but I think I’ll be ok,” and then had one of my brothers whack me really hard in the chest with a tennis racquet so that later I could at least be like, “oh, my poor bruised chest!” It seems juvenile and stupid, but trust me, it’s better than the alternative. The fact of the matter is you very well could have had a legitimately bruised chest. It was an ordeal for you, too. And she’s not going to have much empathy for your side of the situation unless you manufacture a little.

If she was in the car with you, it’s either better or worse, depending. Maybe better if the accident wasn’t even remotely your fault and there was nothing you could have done, and in fact you did a great job just making sure it wasn’t any worse than it had to be. Maybe that earns you points. I don’t know. Probably not until later unless you have one of those super reasonable girlfriends that I’m not sure exist. If that sounds like a description of your girlfriend, hold onto her one hundred percent forever. For all more normal girlfriend circumstances, having her at the scene will involve a lot of freaking out. A LOT of freaking out. Judging by the amount of freaking out I’ve experienced with a girlfriend who was not even in the same state as the accident, I’m thinking it would be pretty much a freakout apocalypse if she was there at the time. Maybe her knowledge of what’s going on makes her less furious at you and more mad at the other guy. Or just plain sad about the car, which is fine. But who knows? I wouldn’t try it if you can avoid it. Remember: freakout apocalypse.

Of course if the accident is your fault, whatever freakouts happen are justifiable. But take solace in knowing that the freakouts would have happened anyway even if it wasn’t remotely your fault. What’s great about totaling your girlfriend’s car is that it’s an auto accident, a logistical nightmare, possibly a life-altering traumatic experience, a sudden and enormous financial burden, and, as if that all weren’t enough, a big huge fucking relationship warfare fight that you don’t want to have. All rolled into one. And regardless of whether the accident is completely your fault or not, you’ll have to do some real quick thinking about how much you value this relationship. Like all fights where you’re suddenly talking about your relationship instead of just watching football like you thought you were going to, this is going to suck. But unlike those normal football fights where she’s just talking and it’s your job to sit there and pretend that all you want to do is listen to her instead of watching football until you’ve told her she’s right about whatever it is enough that she’ll hopefully (probably not) allow you to continue watching football, with a wrecked car scenario you can kind of decide how much it’s going to suck depending on how much you care. Because going back to watching football is out of the question. The football game is totaled.

The good news is how much you care will be apparent right away. Like you’ll either think “I do not want to deal with this any more than I have to,” or “I’m going to have to work my ass off to make sure she doesn’t hate me forever.” These thoughts will likely occur to you in some form in that impossibly small but slow amount of time it takes between knowing you’re going to be in an accident and actually colliding with whatever it is. That is a weird second. But you’ll know if this girlfriend of yours is worth “I will absorb every insult you hurl at me without lashing back, and I will handle all of the police report and insurance stuff, and I will make sure you get a rental car as soon as possible, and I will do anything you want to make sure this is right, and it’s going to be one of the worst days in my life because I won’t know until you calm down a bit later that you even care for me anymore because you left me twelve voicemails after my phone died about how you’re breaking up with me and how I’m a piece of shit.” You kind of know you love her if you’re willing to put up with that.

Otherwise, maybe it’s best to use this accident as an excuse to start a new life. Maybe assume a new identity. That would probably be a good idea, because if your commitment to this relationship is anything short of the above scenario, you’re going to have an ugly breakup and possibly even a lawsuit on your hands. If she’s just a rebound person or somebody you’re fooling around with because you’re bored, you should complain of severe neck pain, sneak out of the hospital, and make a run for Mexico. Give yourself a running start. Not really. But you can maybe be a little more hard line on “I’ll do everything I can to make this right” because technically she has insurance for that and technically it’s her fault for letting you drive her car. Technically. That’s the way she should be thinking if you’re a total douchebag.

This reminds me. Totaling your girlfriend’s brand new car is a douchebaggy activity to be sure, but handling the aftermath with aplomb is a prime example of coming through in a pinch. You pretty much have to handle it well in order to justify all of your regular day-to-day douchebag behavior. The idea of living like a douchebag is that you’re a good guy deep down, you just don’t feel the need to take other people’s feelings into consideration when you’re doing something simple like jaywalking across a street. It’s a fine way to be, but it only works if you A. don’t get too bent out of shape when some jaywalker takes his sweet time to cross in front of you while you’re the driver, and B. actually are a good guy deep down. The former requires a certain amount of patience, and the latter involves coming through in a pinch. You’ll need both skill sets in healthy doses to deal with the nightmare of totaling your girlfriend’s brand new car.

Also I didn’t mention this, but if somebody is dead as a result of this accident, then you don’t need a guide to totaling your girlfriend’s brand new car. You need a guide to dealing with a fatal car accident.

If somebody’s dead and your fucking girlfriend is still freaking out at you about how her brand new car is wrecked, you have to break up with her. Just as a matter of principle.

And if your girlfriend is freaking out as much as mine did, you might end up killing somebody later just so you can finally get some peace and quiet in a jail cell. But before then, you’ll handle this car thing as well as you possibly can because you don’t want dudes in jail to think you’re a total unredeemable douchebag. Just like a medium one would be fine.