Today, in Orange, I backed into a tree and smashed the back windscreen of the 1987 Toyota Camry station wagon. This was after I’d bought a mortar and pestle at The Essential Ingredient. I’d decided that the mortar and pestle would be our Christmas present to each other this year. Steve gives me the mortar. I give him the pestle. Or vice versa. After that I was backing into what I thought was a parking spot but was actually a large tree. A loud bang, a shattering. Safety glass everywhere, raining gently down. I parked at Windscreens O’Brien and walked across an aesthetic no person’s land to Hungry Jacks, while I waited for a call back from the 24 hour emergency people. I bought a chicken caesar salad and a coffee. I ate and drank these in the car, while waiting. The salad was very, very grim. The Windscreens man was very nice. He brought his daughter, a girl of eight or nine. The daughter went inside to create pictures out of “faxed” and “invoiced” stamps and highlighter pens and whatever else she could find in the office. She was dressed in pink, of course. Anyway, while she was inside doing this, her father taped plastic all over the back of the car. He said he couldn’t replace the windscreen because the tailgate was actually dented. He recommended I buy a whole new tailgate from a wrecker’s. Steve’s poor car. I have bashed and dented it all around the edges.