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....And neither are my car door magnets. Well, at least not one of them.
I had door magnets made with the name of our business so I could drive and advertise at the same time. (I call it our business because I still think of my husband in the present tense. Just think of him as the ultimate silent partner.) I was quite pleased with myself; I spent twelve eye-bleeding hours (remember that whole "not sleeping" thing we widowed people do?) looking up and looking at corporate branding sites on the web. I found a logo that I was pleased with, and I even came up with a tag line. I spent another two eye-bleeding and stress inducing hours doing the layout for the door panels in Microsoft Paint. More than fourteen hours later, I downloaded everything onto a thumb drive and took it to be processed. Twenty-four hours later, et voila! I had two door magnets, perfect in every way.
Um, yeah; about that...
I proudly placed them on my car doors, making sure to follow all the instructions. The doors were clean. I didn't leave them on the car overnight. I tucked them in flat, just the way they like. I would have given them hot cocoa, but the stores were closed. We had a grand time traveling down the highways and byways, the wind blowing through our hair. (Well, maybe not the panels' hair because they weren't the least bit hirsute.)
Um, yeah... We should talk about the wind at some point...
We traveled down the last weekend to the Falls and the Shenandoah. We stopped for coffee. It was (dare I say it?!) good.
And then there was the trip to the grocery store. Yup.
I put my door magnets where they had ridden all weekend. They looked secure, but the driver's side one? I should have been more attentive. Should I have asked how it's day had been? Maybe even mentioned how fantastic it looked?
I drove the mile to the grocery store. When I got out of the car, it was gone. The half of the set, vanished.
I frantically drove back the way I came, searching for that other half. Twice. Without success.
Yet another loss.
I sadly made my way back to where I'd ordered the pair of door magnets, thumb drive in hand. I told the manager what had happened, and re-ordered a replacement. Like that was going to fix things. How was I going to replace something that had been a part of my life, even if just for a short while? No matter how long it had been, it wasn't long enough.
It was dark when I made my way back home. I re-traced the route one last time, hoping that maybe, just maybe...
My headlights picked up something shiny in the right hand turn lane, four lanes over. The shape was a perfect rectangle, so I knew it wasn't a square puddle. (It also hadn't rained and even if it had, puddles aren't rectangular.) I made a U-turn, parked my car, and ran across two lanes of traffic to get to what I saw.
It was my door panel. Remember the wind? It had picked up a corner of the magnet and ripped it off the car, but it landed face down on the other side of the road. And believe it or not, the front didn't have a scratch on it. It seems that the edges were curled a bit, but a visit back to the shop seems ot have fixed it, I hope.
So the pair of door magnets are back together, laying flat in the car, side by side, as they should be.
Well, at least it's happened for one of us.
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