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Due to the many activities of life, I have not been able to mow the lawn as often as other people – mainly my neighbors – mow. The other night we got home shortly before sundown and I figured it was my best chance to mow.

So I started mowing and kept mowing, turning on the headlights, until shortly after sundown. There was still a little light – it was probably officially dusk when I finished. It wasn’t always easy to see while I was mowing. Most of the time I noticed the sticks and branches but some I didn’t, so I ran over a few things. That is not good for your mower blades, so don’t mow at night.

After I finished, I saw some bits of glass on the driveway. I thought that was odd, as we don’t use glass bottles for anything. And I knew that plastic water bottles don’t shatter like that. But some people had been over earlier in the week, so I thought maybe they brought some glass with them.

On my way back from stowing the lawn mower, I stopped to look at the shards of glass in the driveway. They happened to be right next to my car, the Buick. My gaze left the driveway and traveled up the side of the Buick, stopping at the hole in the rear side window. For a few seconds, I stood there, trying to comprehend what I was seeing. I knew what I saw – the window was shattered – but I was thinking “Is there any way that what I’m seeing is not really happening?”

After I opened the door and some pieces of glass fell on the driveway, I figured it was real and there was nothing to do but clean up. I was wearing gloves, so I started picking the pieces out of the door handle. It wasn’t working very well, so I tried to think of a better way to get the hundreds of pieces of glass out of the car. I am glad I have a Shop Vac. I brought that out and it sucked all the glass shards out of the car with no problem. I never found the projectile that caused the damage, as the vacuum probably took it along with all the glass. I did remember one particularly hefty ka-chunk sound while mowing, and that was near the car. I don’t normally run over items on purpose, but as it was dark, I didn’t see whatever it was in the lawn. I think it was a rock. Don’t mow in the dark, and keep your lawn clear of objects.

After the car was cleaned, I inspected the driveway. As there was glass scattered around the tires, I knew I didn’t want to move the car without cleaning up that glass first. So I started vacuuming the driveway too. The problem there was that it is a dirt and gravel driveway. So I vacuumed more dirt and gravel than glass. But I think I got the driveway all cleaned, eventually.

Another problem was that this was slightly after dusk now, so the mosquitoes were out in full force. They are bad enough normally at that time, but I had a vacuum hose in one hand and a flashlight in the other, so I couldn’t really react quickly. Plus I had picking up glass shards with my gloves, so I didn’t want to be smacking or scratching myself with those gloves.

The next day, I took the car to the Buick dealership to have the rear side window replaced. There was no glass left, so it was more like having a window installed. I expected that, of all places, a Buick dealership would have a replacement window available. The car is only a few years old, but they did not have those windows in stock. They could order a part from GM, but it would take a few days to arrive. Or, the option I took, they could have a local glass company come and replace the window. So I paid the dealership to contract out the work. The final bill was around $150, not as bad as I thought when I first saw the damage. But it is a lot more than $0, which is what I would have paid if none of this had happened.