It isn't that I dislike my car's side view mirrors. I'm fond of them both. I seem to favor the left one over the right, but it has more to do with practicality than emotional attachment. Unfortunately, neither one has a strong physical attachment to my car.

Five years ago, shortly after I bought the car, a bicyclist knocked off my right mirror. I was in graduate school at the time. I was heading to class and trying to find parking. As I made a right turn, a cyclist raced into the intersection and hit my car, taking off the mirror.

The police responded quickly. Two squad cars happened to be taking a break at McDonalds across the street. I later learned the cyclist was carrying chain cutters and had stolen the bike from campus.

About three months ago, a delineator post broke off my left mirror. I was driving to writing class after work. Back then, the Highway 85-101 interchange was still under construction. With a sound wall on the right and orange delineator posts on the left, the narrow "two-lane" ramp was really a generous one-lane ramp.

I was in the left lane. A truck towing a trailer was in the right. We were next to one another as we took the ramp. His trailer drifted into my lane and I shifted just enough to avoid him and clip a delineator post, snapping off the mirror.

With both mirrors replaced once, the side view mirror universe had achieved a certain balance. The balance didn't last long.

On Saturday evening, a truck took off my right mirror. M and I were driving on a two-lane road in Elk Grove, a town just south of Sacramento. Traffic was busy in our direction. In front of a new housing development off to our right, the road widened for a short distance before narrowing again. A single side street served as the development's only entrance.

I started pulling off to the right, thinking the side street was the one I wanted. As I did, a truck charged past us on the passenger side. He scraped both doors, dented the front door and ripped off the mirror. Having grown impatient from sitting in traffic, the driver thought he could save time by speeding down the widened stretch of road before merging back into the line of cars.

We were shaken, but uninjured. The next few minutes were surreal. The truck went another hundred feet before braking and we almost thought he wasn't going to stop. He wrote down a name and number, but claimed he wasn't carrying his license or insurance papers. When M pressed him further, he claimed the truck wasn't his, but belonged to his boss. He then left the scene while I was on the phone with the police. Thanks to quick thinking, M had already jotted down his license plate number, a key piece of information we later gave to the police.

With two days to replay Saturday's events in my head, I can't express how grateful I am that nobody was hurt, especially M. We were lucky. Things could've been much worse than a damaged mirror. Side view mirrors are replaceable. They don't like to admit it, but it's true. I only hope it'll be a long time before another one needs replacing.