meeting the neighbors...

We've been having a hard time backing the car out of the garage.  By "we" I actually mean Dan, but that's not important.  After a few days of sharing only each others' lovely company, our friend Angelique said she and her family would meet us at our house so we could follow them to the beach.  Great!  We were so excited to be around people.  We assumed our "getting the car out of the garage" positions - I stood by our neighbors' fence poised to give the necessary hand signals while Dan buckled up and instantaneously started sweating bullets.  Our first, brief encounter with our neighbor was a few days ago when she popped her head over the fence to watch Dan try to manoeuver the car out of the garage and into the alley.  "He needs to make fewer moves," she sagely offered. (You mean 8 tries is not good?!?)  "Sophie does it in one quick swwwpppp (French sound accompanied by a gesture for which I have no words)."  This, of course, did not help as much as she had hoped.  I of course had a better suggestion for Dan, "You need to somehow do it better."  He wasn't thrilled with my advice either.  So, this day, on the brink of making it out of the garage and into the alley in only TWO tries, Dan and I shared an excited giggle.  He got ready to make his final move forward as I walked to the passenger side of the car.  Suddenly, the car lurched backwards.  "Dan!" I cried out.  Whew!  He was about an inch, I mean 2.5 centimeters, from the fence.  THAT was a close call.  "Come on Dan, get it together."  Dan put it into first gear and hit the gas hard so he wouldn't drift back into the fence.  Well, he didn't drift back.  He slammed into the fence, shocking everyone around us, and most of all himself.  I couldn't believe my eyes.  Or my ears.  CRRRAAACCCKKK.  Oh merde!  Dan managed to put the car in the right gear and unhook the little Polo from the fence.  All I could think about was that now I had to explain to our neighbors that we had just rammed their fence. After all, they had tried to help us improve our turns. Oh yeah, and our new friends just saw the whole thing.  Did that really just happen?!?  After a few minutes of me fretting, pacing the alley trying to find the best way to enter their property, the neighbor appeared.  I bumbled "Je suis désolée, mon mari...la voiture...est-ce que c'est cassée?"  She did not look happy.  "Ça a fait CRACK!" She said.  Um, yeah, I noticed.  She told me she'd have her husband look at it later and gave us a few more suggestions.  We went to the beach and spent the whole three hours thinking about how, thanks to us, "Franco-American relations were now at an all-time low" (thanks, Ramsey!)  When we returned home, we stalled in the house a little before deciding that we needed to check the prognosis of the fence.  Turns out, it'll stand a little while longer and has been reinforced with a 2x4, I mean a 5x10.  We were strongly advised to NOT back into the other side of the fence.  We'll work on that ;)