Superstition says bad things come in threes, and they tend to bunch up during a full moon.

Mary Grace, our youngest daughter, blamed what happened to her recently on rotten luck, but she still hoped to break the spell after the third incident involving her SUV within a week. She didn't.

Incident One: She backed out of her driveway and smashed a friend's car.

Separate Incident Two: Her SUV's side mirror clipped the framing on the side of the garage door.

Additional Incident Three: She opened the SUV door and a woman attempting to park beside her slammed into the door and drove it into the front side panel.

That's when she called me because her husband was attending a funeral and couldn't be reached.

"This woman's really mad," she whispered into the phone. "What am I supposed to do?"

The woman didn't want a police report. Neither did she think much damage occurred because she didn't see a dent in the SUV.

The scraping and creaking sounds of the door opening and closing, she thought, could be resolved with WD 40.

She wanted to give Mary Grace cash.

"She's really mad now that I have called the insurance company," Mary Grace again whispered into her cell phone.

"Stay cool," I advised.

The insurance agent told her to call the Suwanee, Ga., police.

"I've called the police," I heard her tell the woman.

"Dad, she's really, really mad now," Mary Grace said, whispering again.

I advised her to get into her SUV, lock the door and wait.

The police report indicated the other woman's vehicle hit Mary Grace's, which had her feeling good as she headed into the mall to buy the pair of children's shoes she needed.

But the theory about bad things coming in threes fell flat that day.

You will never guess who the clerk was in the shoe store.

That's right, the other woman.

"Why didn't you go somewhere else for the shoes?" I asked.

Her answer was logical: "They were on sale."

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