This was a usual Sunday morning, with us scrambling to get out the door so we could make it to church on time. We piled into the car and started down the road in the light rain. Yancy turned on the windsheild wipers...and they half-heartedly made one swipe, then one just gave up and the other one went totally crazy and shot off to the side - sticking out from the side of the car like a broken wing. One look at Yancy's face and I was laughing. I made an unappreciated joke about our car being an injured bird, flying in circles, while he whipped off into a gas station and jammed the offending wiper back down into place. This isn't his first go-round with these wipers. They quit on me last week when I was trying to get home through the snowstorm after school let out early. I had to keep stopping and wiping off the windsheild with my gloves. So when I got home, he worked on them for a few minutes and pronounced them fixed. Guess not.
Fortunately, it didn't rain very hard, and we made it to church and back without futher incident.
But that's not the end of the story...
Hillary quickly changed clothes and scarfed down a grilled cheese, so she could get back to the church by 1:00 for Fine Arts practice. Meanwhile, Dad was on the internet, trying to figure out what to do about the wipers. She grabbed her stuff and the truck keys and went out the door. About a minute later my cell phone rang. "Mom, tell Dad to come out here. I'm stuck!" Hillary had parked the truck at the top of the driveway, kind of in the yard, the night before, and now her wheels were buried in soppy mud. Dad to the rescue.
First he tried pushing from the front while Hillary tried to back up. Then he tried pushing from the back. Then he made Hillary get out and they both pushed from the front...rocking the little black truck back and forth, back and forth...succeeding only in settling the truck deeper into it's muddy grooves. Barefoot, and still in my church dress, I yelled helpful suggestions from the front door. I guess he didn't hear me.
After no success with putting things under the wheels, digging with a hoe, and making Hillary sit inside the truck and rock as hard as she could while he pushed, he came in the house to get his phone. His new plan was to call our friend who lives half a mile away to come pull him out. Never mind our next door neighbor who has his own earth-moving business and has all kinds of large, powerful machines parked 50 feet from our stuck truck.
Hillary was getting later and later. I didn't want her to drive herself in the rain with faulty windshield wipers, so I drove her to the church. Luckily, it was only misting - and I had RainX. When I got back the truck was back in it's regular parking place where it belonged. "Did Thompson come pull you out?" I asked. "No," Yancy replied gruffly. "Our neighbor must've seen us out the window and came over to help." Hmmm. Why didn't someone think of that one before?
I think this was a learning experience for all involved. I learned that I should've married a mechanic. Hillary learned not to park in the yard after a hard rain. And hopefully, Yancy learned that it's okay to ask our neighbor for help. Perhaps we haven't "arrived"...but we're getting there!
2 comments:
Oh my word that was really funny. However, I kept waiting for there to be mud sprayed in someone's face. :-)
I read this at work and was crying laughing. (I'm usually just crying at the touching mushy stuff!) I could just imagine Yancey's face with the wiper sticking off the truck. It was almost as good as being there.
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