Bumper Cars

I wanted to tell our story with your Dad that was so funny. It was during the visit that your Mom and Dad (and you, Stan and Enid, I think) - back in the late 80's - We tried to think of things that everyone might like to see and do around Richmond and, knowing that your Dad is a history buff, we decided on visiting the James River Plantations -these plantations, there are 3 of them, survived the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the War Between the States (or as northerners continue to call it the Confederate War) - the south is still fighting this one (: haha!

Anyway, we drove to the first plantation, each of us in separate cars - David had rented a car. When we arrived at the first Plantation, we all had to park our cars - that seems normal enough, right? Not quite! Bob proceeded to park our car; we got out and walked over to where David was parking his car and could not believe what were seeing! He was trying to parallel park between two other cars and was hitting the car in front of him and the one in back of him - really hard! People in the parking lot were all looking at this guy parallel parking and hitting the cars, "back and forth, back and forth," then finally fit his car in the space, definitely not meant for a car as big as the one he was attempting to park! - it was the craziest thing ever!

When David got out of the car, I asked him: "What are you doing, hitting the cars when you are parking?" He said very flatly that he was parking the car - to which I said, you can't hit cars here in the U.S. when you park. To that remark, he said,"Well, we do it all the time in the U.K. - what the heck do you think bumpers are for!"

We all laughed so hard - and to this day, I still tell this story when anyone asks about my fabulous family in the U.K!

It was a fantastic trip and we have had a few more since then; but, this story outlasts them all.

Marrin & Bob