is it any wonder my parents' insurance premiums are so high?

our 2000 silver nissan xterra has been through a lot. more than most cars go through in a lifetime. more than all the cars that some people will have in a lifetime even.

when i was at school in winter 2001 my brother was driving on one of the hilly roads (needlessly) and it was snowy and icy and he crashed it into a tree. he walked away but the car was only nearly totaled. it was in the shop for like four months with a total damage of about 15k. luckily my parents only had to pay 5.

a year later my sister's boyfriend was driving it with her (she has never driven on an interstate) up to his house in minnesota. it was another snowy icy day and they ran into a semi at 30 mph. again, they both walked away but the poor car was nearly totaled.

since it's now the shittiest car on the lot, they've let my other sister have free reign of it. last fall as she was driving to community college she hit someone as she was turning and crumpled up one of the ends of it. that was another 1500 dollars worth of work. my sister paid my dad back all of it. oh, AND, the rear bumper got all crumpled in when she hit a light post while backing up. she'd said she had sneezed and her foot accidentally pressed the accelerator.

today, the poor xterra remains impounded by the LITH Police.

which provides an explanation for all the confusion of yesterday.

i mentioned earlier in my last post that the LITH police had called yesterday morning looking for my sister. i thought she was home, so i told them that i thought she was sleeping, let me go see if i can wake her. finding she wasn't in her bed, i went outside to look for the xterra. it wasn't there either. i came back to the phone, told them what i knew, took down a number, gave them her cell number, and hung up.

then i was blogging and reading other people's blogs and doing email and reading the news, and the dorbell rang. it was a police officer. but not from the LITH department, but from the BH department. he told me that LITH had sent him over to check and see if everything was alright and to look for my sister (i guess they thought i could be hiding her.) he told me that she had been involved in an incident and he didn't want her to be an accessory to a crime by hiding her friend who had been involved. so i showed him her room, my ID; i took him out back to show him that indeed, the xterra was not there.

concerned after the first phone call, i had tried to phone my mom to see if she knew anything, but she hadn't picked up the first time. the officer from the BH police department was using the phone, so i tried her again. this time she picked up and i asked her what had happened.

apparently, my sister had been in the infamous xterra making out with this guy outside her friend kevin's apartment. kevin came home from work and found them in the car. he went and got a knife and stabbed the kid in the arm, and slit his own throat saying to my sister, do you want me to kill myself? i want to kill myself! i'm not sure what happened immediately after or how my sister reacted or what she did, but she drove him to the emergency room. my mom had told me that they had gone to GS Hospital. i relayed that info to the cop standing in my kitchen. as it turned out though, they had actually gone to SAMC, precisely the place i had been working for the past month!

the cop took down some more numbers, told me to have my mom call LITH, thanked me for my time, and left.

my mom said kevin must have lied about how it happened because they treated him and released him. if a person is suicidal, i think they keep them for observation.

finally my mom got home. soon afterwards, two BH police expeditions pull up into the driveway to question my mom. the cop from before and another one. i guess they asked her if she wasn't worried that her daughter was with someone who had stabbed another person? my mom told them not to try to make her feel guilty and that at some point you have to let go and let your kids do their own thing.

i'm not sure how my sister meets these people. the day before she had taken him to his last meeting with his probation officer. he will most likely be going to jail for a long time. i really hope he gets some psychiatric help though. anytime i've seen him he's seemed like this nice tranquil quiet kid. hopefully if the kid presses charges the fact that he threatened to kill himself will get out there and they will make him get phychiatric help.

so until that gets decided, the xterra remains impounded at the LITH police department.