Understanding: A Beautiful Human Quality
Well. I did it. .. me-the person who considers herself the most careful driver to ever grace the streets and highways-has done it. Yep, you guessed it, old Ms. “no driving record” me, has managed to ding her brand new car. After thirty plus years of driving wonderfully. I found out first hand that an approximately 16 foot car will not fit into an approximately 15 foot 11.5 inch parking space. I also found out the hard way that 1985 plastic car chrome and lights are no match for an old beat up pick em up truck with a big bumper.
All my trouble started last week when I drove to school to pick up “Clark.” When I arrived at the school I found the perfect parking space, right in front. This space was in front of a big yellow school bus and behind an old dilapidated pick up that looked like it had been towed to the spot and left. Knowing how to parallel park and knowing exactly what I was doing. I pulled along side the old truck and started backing into the perfect parking place. It didn’t take long before I heard the awful crunch. This is when I decided that there was a remote possibility that the perfect parking place was a little too small for my car. Not wanting to push my luck. I left and parked my car up the street. When I surveyed the damage, there was not a scratch on the truck bumper. Just a gaping hole where a light had been on my car and a lot of plastic lying in the street. I had not only broken the light on the side of my car. I had broken the plastic chrome that holds the lights in place and makes it look odd.
This is when the dilemma started. “What am I going to do now?” and “How am I going to tell Mr. M?” kept running through my mind. As all women know, husbands are wonderful people, but there are times and circumstances when understanding is not their greatest quality. I could just hear it-questions like, “Didn’t you see a big truck sitting there?” or the old standby, “Why did you do that?” The only answers to these questions would have to be a sheepish “Yes” and “I don’t know.” With this in mind my first thought was to have the car fixed that afternoon. With the car fixed it would be impossible for anyone to know it had been dinged in the first place. After a quick call to Weld County Garage to arrange for the fastest repair job in the history of car repair they told me that they did not have the parts and it would take a week to get them in the shop. Now that this plan had failed, I had to think of something else. This is when I decided on the poor pitiful Pearl guessing game method. This method is when you tell someone something by asking them if they can guess what you did before you tell them the bad news. For example, the first pitiful words out of my mouth when I reached Mr. M at his office was. .. “Boy am I dumb, you will never guess what I did today.” The only logical thing anyone can say to a statement like this is, “No, I can’t guess, what did you do?” Well, Mr. M did not disappoint me, those were his exact words. This gave me the opportunity to explain every detail of what I had done with no interruptions. When I finished telling him everything (right down to the fact that I had already ordered the new parts to fix the car). His words to me were, “When did the garage say they could have it fixed?” Truly husbandly understanding at work.
Now you might think the story ends there. Wrong! A couple of days later this same person who can’t judge distances, ran out of gas in her almost perfect new car. Luckily we were in the parking lot of Mr. Steak. When we got out of the car to go get some gas, we accidentally set off the factory installed theft alarm system, and of course, I had never read my owner’s manual to learn how to turn it off. For a full five minutes we sat in the car trying to figure out how to stop the lights from flashing and the horn from honking. I even tried to read the instructions on how to turn it off in the owner’s manual but the distraction of the horn honking and lights flashing and looking over my shoulder to see if the police were coming were too much for me, I just couldn’t concentrate. Finally after five minutes of the horn honking and the lights flashing the thing turn ed off and the excitement was over. Luckily nobody called the police to report a suspected car theft. All I needed at this point was to be hauled into the police station and booked for trying to steal my own car. I am sure they would have never believed me if I would have told them that I couldn’t steal it in the first place. ..it didn’t have any gas. Or maybe with me being a woman, they would have.
I will tell you one thing, if this keeps up. At our house, understanding, especially husbandly understanding, will be just another word I can find in the “U” section of the dictionary.
