When I was 17, I wrecked my girlfriend’s car.

We were driving around aimlessly, because that’s all I could really afford to do. We took her Durango, because it was nicer than my car, but she liked me to drive, so I drove.

Right into a pole.

In my defense, the pole was basically asking to be driven into. It was a short metal pipe, painted black (incidentally, the same color as the parking lot), and it sat low enough that you could easily miss it if you were in a car that sat a little higher up.

Like, say, a Dodge Durango.

I was maneuvering out of a parking spot, and I as I backed up I felt a sickening crunch as the nearly invisible pole folded a giant crease all the way down the car door.

I remember driving back to my girlfriend's house, absolutely terrified, as she tried to reassure me that everything would be okay.
I remember thinking "No, it's definitely not going to be okay. Your dad is going to kill me."

I remember walking up the steps toward the front door in slow motion, feeling like my life was over. I remember telling her dad “I’m so sorry, but I didn’t see the pole….”

And I remember the first words out of his mouth:

“Are you okay?”

I didn't know what to say. This was not how I'd been expecting him to respond.

He didn’t seem mad.
He didn’t seem disappointed.
In fact, he didn’t really seem to care about the car at all.

I stood there frozen, so he asked it again: “Are you okay, Kyle?”
“Yeah” I managed to stammer out. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Is my daughter okay?”
“Yes, Mr. Sparks, she’s fine. We’re both totally fine.”

“Good!” he said. “Then it sounds like the important stuff is okay.”

He turned to walk back into the house. “What about the car?” I asked.
I’ll never forget his response:

“It’s just stuff, Kyle.”

"What do you mean? It's expensive stuff, and I broke it." I said.

“It’s okay. It’s just stuff. The car will be fine. The important thing is that you’re both okay.”

They never got that door fixed. I think my girlfriend's dad figured it was just cosmetic damage, and his daughter’s stupid boyfriend would probably run into another pole at some point anyway, so he may as well just let it ride. But every time I saw that dent, instead of feeling a sense of shame or regret, I thought about what he’d said: “It’s just stuff, Kyle.”

That story came to mind earlier this summer when my hometown got hit with softball-sized hail. The bulk of the damage occurred near the airport, which was, conveniently, exactly where my truck was parked.

I heard about the storm while I was away on a speaking trip, and I held out hope that my truck had been spared. But alas, no such luck. My windshield was shattered, one of my camper shell windows was broken out, and every horizontal surface was covered in dents.

As I surveyed the damage, four words popped into my head from all those years ago: “It’s just stuff, Kyle.”

Isn't that wild? Two decades later, I'm standing in a parking lot, surrounded by storm damage, and a man I haven't talked to in twenty years is still doing work on my brain.

Back in that driveway, he had a split-second to decide how he was going to respond. Some punk kid just wrecked his daughter's car. At best, I just knocked a big chunk off the resale value of the vehicle. At worst, it's a potential safety issue.

He could've yelled.
He could've chosen not to yell, but still shown frustration and disappointment. That certainly would've been justified.
But instead, he just asked if we were okay.

Now that my son is the same age I was back then, I think about this kind of thing a lot.
My kids are going to break things. They're going to wreck cars. They're going to damage furniture. They're going to scratch up the floors and leave their bikes in the rain.

And every single time, I'm going to get a split second to decide whether I hand them shame or tell them "It's just stuff. The important thing is that you're okay."

You get those split seconds, too. Somebody in your life is going to mess up, break something, let you down, and you're going to be standing exactly where Mr. Sparks stood. What you say in that moment might be the thing they're still carrying twenty years from now.

In the end, I did get my windshield fixed (I was never going to pass inspection otherwise), but I kept the dents. They're just cosmetic, and some idiot hailstorm is probably going to come through one of these days anyway, so I may as well just let it ride.

I could fix em, but what’s the point? After all, it’s just stuff.

Happy Friday, friends. Make it a good one.

Kyle Scheele
Author. Speaker. Occasional Car Denter.
​www.KyleScheele.com​