After my sister read a column I wrote about bad luck, she sent me an email. “I have my own story,” she said.

“It all started when I decided to run a few errands before picking Mom up for a doctor’s appointment. I had been to the bank, and then made my next stop at the jewelry store to have my jewelry cleaned. Before I left, the clerk laughed and said, ‘Now don’t have an accident while admiring your shiny clean wedding band.'”

“That must have been the curse.”

Sis said that she checked in the mirror and thought the way was clear as she started to back out. But, “I heard a loud CRUNCH as I hit a car behind me.” It had pulled behind her while she was backing up. She decided to pull forward as her car was against the door of the other car and there were passengers inside.

“As I put the car into drive, I went into some kind of panic mode. My car careened forward and I crashed right through the plate glass window of the doughnut shop next to the jewelry shop. All I saw was falling glass.”

Now, I have to interject here that my sister is normally a very careful driver and has probably never had an accident before in her entire life, much less committed terrorism against a donut shop.

“Everyone came rushing up to see if I was OK. I was fine, but I sure felt stupid, with the front of my car sticking into the doughnut shop. Miraculously, nobody was injured.”

It gets worse…

“Suddenly sirens started sounding, and police, fire trucks, and city officials started zeroing in on the place. I had destroyed the best doughnut shop in town, so naturally the police were concerned.”

“People with cameras started stopping to take pictures. I prayed I would not be on TV. Someone joked that I had created my own drive-through.”

“My car was dragged away to the body shop. Luckily, I did not receive any type of citation. I’ve been getting lots of phone calls from insurance people today. The doughnut shop got the window boarded up and was back in business in just a couple of hours.”

“I’m not telling anyone I know about the whole thing, because I feel like a major idiot. I’m the crazy old lady who ran through the store front,” said my sister.

To help her out, I decided I’d put the story on the Internet where her secret would be safe.

After the accident, she called Mom to tell her to cancel her doctor’s appointment as she had a wreck and couldn’t make it. Mom was hysterical, as usual. “I knew you had a wreck before you even called,” Mom said. Mom always imagines the worse possible explanation for being late, so finally she got to be right.

“Mom decided that my new car had been jinxed from the start, and she always thought it didn’t sound right.” If you can’t blame anyone else, blame the car, I guess.

“So that’s my bad luck story for this week,” says my sis. “Can you top it?”

No, I don’t think so, but probably the reason she didn’t make the evening news was that someone else crashed an SUV into the bedroom of a house on the same day, stealing her thunder.

©2009