Fender

I had a fender bender on my way to work.

The fender was badly dented.

There were no damages to the cars involved in the fender bender.

Many of the decisions we make every day are based on less-than-perfect knowledge. For example, while GPS-based applications on smartphones can provide a travel-time estimate for our daily drive to work, an unexpected factor like a sudden downpour or fender bender might mean a ride originally estimated to be 20 minutes could actually take longer.

It was just a fender bender.

A car with a dented fender drove past.

A car with a dented fender drove by.

Now and then he would make a motion with his feet as if he were running quickly backward upstairs, and would tread on the edge of the fender, so that the fire-irons went flying and the buttered-bun dishes crashed against each other in the hearth.

Our solid, shiny chairs, our immense, dingy sofas, our heavy mahogany tables and our cast-iron fenders, often bearing the initials of long-dead railway companies, likewise our plaster walls of chocolate and duck-egg green and our hissing gasoliers have their roots deep in our national history.