Mistakes were made

Do all languages on the planet have the "passive voice", this great instrument for shirking responsibility? If not, how do these other peoples do it -- or don't they?

One of our contributors had been remodeling his house without incident. Buoyed by this success, he started working on the roof of the adjacent flat roof garage.

The tar paper was old, brittle, and torn up in places by the work on the rest of the house.
Mechanical removal of the old layer was easy.

The construction supply vendor had suggested material and procedures for the new weather protection layer, and all supplies were sitting in a pile for the valiant handyman.

To make a long story short, he had procrastinated and was half done when the weather turned bad, and a week of late fall rains soaked the half finished coat of bitumen adhesive holding down the new tar paper.

Late one night, the door bell rang, and the agitated neighbor who was renting one of the garages burst out: "My car, it's all covered in this black stuff, I cannot drive anywhere. It's all gooey!"

The amateur handyman was shaken by the event. The cocky confidence behind a congenial, modest demeanor had evaporated before the lady had finished the first sentence.

When she told him the local auto shop would pick up the car in the morning and try to get it cleaned, he stressed that she should have it done as soon as possible. He said, he had bought adhesive without VOC, volatile organic compounds, which should be much easier on the paint of the car.

The next morning, he said, "She saw I was working up there, of course, I feel for her. But she should not have put the car into the garage if she was worried."

To a neutral observer, this looked awfully like denial, and he gulped when this was pointed out to him.

He became more relaxed after talking to the insurance company, and by that afternoon the car was back, all cleaned, and the insurance was going to pay the 200 euros invoiced. He had held the policy for years without any claim, so, that may have expedited their processing.

For a few days after that, he could be heard talking about how, yes, he had seen hairline cracks in the concrete roof but had not realized water would wash out some of the adhesive and drip on the car inside.
He'd say things like "Look at how thick that concrete is, back in the US you'd qualify as a fallout shelter with a roof like that."

A couple of weeks later, he ran into the now former renter on the street. They talked, and she told him she had run the car into another neighbor's garden wall, to the tune of 3 500 euros.

As we said at the beginning of the post, mistakes were made.