Last night when I went out with my Spanish class, I mentioned a situation in which I rented a car and accidently put normal fuel in a diesel-powered Mercedes. Naturally, the thing broke down and I was called an idiot by the passanger (The Boy) in the car, and we had to have the thing towed at six o'clock the following morning. Worse, we knew we would have to pay a huge late fee at the rental place, plus whatever expenses were required to clean out the engine and make the car work again.
Oddly, The Boy called the place the following morning, explained what had happened, and we walked away from the whole nasty experience without paying an extra dime.
When I told this story, everyone gasped and I said, "That's just the way The Boy is. Things always work for him. If it had been me, I would still be paying off that car rental..."
My best friend from high school is this way, too. She's been known to weasel her way out of the strangest situations in the most creative ways. The weirdest part is that she's not really even trying; she just says the first thing that comes to mind, and before you know it, she's getting free deals and 20% coupons instead of paying the required $90 late fee. It's mysterious.
This golden cloud doesn't follow me around like it does those people in my entourage. I don't know if it's that I'm disorganized (no), stupid (I hope not), or just unlucky (what I resort to as an explanation), but things often go wrong for me. Not Big Important Things like jobs or school or health insurance, but little things like buying the walkman that breaks down after two days or having the post office lose my packages.
So the car episode got me thinking of karma and how somewhere, somehow, some miracle thing is going to happen and I'm going to think, Oh, right. Something's finally working for me!
But then I realized that's already happened. I don't know why I'm going to tell this story, because I know my parents read this site, but I figure what's done is done and hopefully they'll get a good laugh out of this:
When I was 14, I don't know what came over me one summery afternoon after school but I did something extraordinarly stupid. Let's blame it on new and conflicting hormones that made logical reasoning impossible, shall we?
Yes.
So that particular afternoon, I got the brilliant idea to try to drive the car. I had never driven before, of course, but that seemed like a small obstacle at the time.
I have no idea why we had an extra car at home when I was there alone, nor whose keys I took when this light bulb went off in my head. But the facts clearly show that the minivan was parked on the driveway, and I had keys to use.
Our driveway was on a huge, huge slant, so sharp that sometimes we couldn't get up it in winter if there was enough snow/ice. The front door to our house was up a flight of stairs that sort of jutted onto the driveway at an angle, with a final step slightly bigger than the rest that cut off right at the driveway's edge.
Now, I recall turning the car on without any trouble. I also recall figuring out reverse vs drive, which is an important step in learning to drive (by yourself).
But what I don't think I figured out was that reversing quickly on a very steep hill makes a car go very quickly. The back wheels went down fine, but when I realized I was more or less heading towards our front garden, I started turning. This put the car at the strangest angle to the driveway itself, and I found myself in the awkward position of having the middle part of the minivan stuck on the bottom step up our stairs. Oddly, the car could not go forward or backward. Somehow, I managed to really lodge the van unto that step, and I still to this day would not know how to replicate the act if forced.
Naturally, I freaked out. It would be pretty hard to explain how the minivan got stuck on the staircase in my parents' absence, and it would be even harder to explain why the hell I thought I could just take the car for a spin without ever having learned how to drive in the first place. Panicked, I turned off the engine and got out of the car.
I walked back into the house and sort of paced the living room for awhile, and then I came back out and considered the situation again. Yeah. The car was pretty stuck. And no, I didn't know how to unstick it.
Just then, I heard the sound of construction from up the street. I don't know if they were building the new house on the corner or doing some other sort of repair, but I know there was definetly a reasably-sized crew working up the street. It took me about .036 seconds to realize what I had to do to save myself from a rather awkward parental encounter.
I marched up the street and called over two of the construction workers. Because I was 14, four came over instead.
Me: Hi, I have a sort of embarassing situation and I was wondering if I could use your help.
Guy 1: Um... what kind of help?
Me: Well, I just got my license and I wanted to take my parents' minivan for a drive, but somehow I managed to get it stuck on the staircase...
Guy 2: Yeah?
Me: Well, I was just wondering if maybe you could lift it off for me?
I shit you not, a group of four burly construction men came down the street and lifted my parents' minivan off the steps. For good measure, one of them asked if I wanted him to straighten it out on the driveway. Blowing my entire just-got-my-license act, I nodded and thanked him vigorously.
They all had quite a laugh, but can you believe my luck?
OH DEAR SWEET LORD HOW COULD YOU HAVE SAVED THIS STORY FOR NEARLY A DECADE??????? HOW DID THIS STORY NOT JUST BURST OUT OF YOU AT SOME FAMILY GATHERING BECAUSE DEAR SWEET LORD!!!!
Ahem. sorry for yelling, but the tears were rolling down my face and I got the hiccups from laughing so hard.
Ha. Good story.
I have a similar stories of stupidity and car-lifting, except I was 19, so had less of an excuse. I got my car stuck on railroad tracks (I took a bizarrely WIDE turn on a street running next to them), which annoyed my friends who were really ready to get to the bars. After much confusion and chaos, two policement lifted my car off the tracks. It was then that I realized my car was apparently made of aluminum foil.
That's HILARIOUS. Great story. :)
Two thoughts occur:
(1) You must have incredibly sweet, understanding parents
(2) Should the minivan have made it out of the driveway, what destination did it have in mind? Just curious...
Love, Mom