Another Pickle

And now, back to the theme of not being too crazy in your life:

The reason you should try to be a quietly normal person is so you don’t find yourself hatching the kind of plan I hatched last week where I corralled a 91-year-old man, a young woman that had just given birth and her ten-day-old baby into a car whose battery then died -  all to go sit by a pond for an hour.

Especially you should not hatch such a plan when the 91-year-old man has pain issues, the baby really has to eat soon and you are in a very public place.

Of course everyone was calm but me: Uncle Ed was calm because, God bless him and give him strength, he has made his peace with his pain. The newborn was calm because the newborn out cold, at least for the moment. And the new mother was calm because though she is new to this newborn, she isn’t new to motherhood. And she has excellent mental health.  And she is well accustomed to these scrapes, having had me for a parent all her life.

After we realized the car battery was as dead as last week's corsage, Uncle Ed began whistling softly, Carrie went to sit on a nearby bench and consul the long list of Calls She Would Like to Try Making While the Baby Is Sleeping, and the baby herself snoozed on.

It was all I could to do gurgle out a single sentence, my throat constricting in panic:

“We have to call a tow truck!” I squeaked.

“Just call AAA,” Carrie called over her shoulder from her bench 20 feet away.

“AAA takes 45 minutes!”

"They only SAY they’ll take that long but they never do.”

“They do though! Sometimes they do!” I yelped, remembering the last time I was in a pinch like this (which you can read about here.

In the end I called Nick and Michael at the service station where I get all my car care, and within ten minutes they sent Jimmy, who gave us the jump, wouldn’t accept any money and insisted on taking a quick peek at the tiny sleeper in the back.

So maybe all really is well that ends well, but I think there might be a lesson for me in here somewhere. I mean a lesson besides the one about being thankful for the presence of angels in our lives with names like Nick, and Michael and Jimmy.

Kick in the Pants P.S.

Triple A, man. You’re glad you have it but boy do you have to jump through some hoops to use it. My girl’s broke-down car was stranded 100 miles to the west for 8 long days while the ‘experts’ dickered. The service station couldn't fix it, the dealership couldn’t fix it... They all threw up their hands, cried  “We don’t know WHAT”S wrong with this car !” and, as a nice kick-in-the-pants P.S. said,  “Get it outa here."So Annie and I each called in sick and spent five harrowing hours trying to do that.The advice from the clowns who handed over the keys? “Drive it ‘til it starts screaming; then call Triple A.” So drive it Annie did, with me following close behind in my car, eyes peeled for the white smoke which in this case would NOT mean “We have a Pope!” but rather “Your vehicle’s in its death throes, get the hell out!”Well, the car did break down again, of course it broke down. As Annie drove it, the engine light came on and it was sure-enough screaming and groaning and finally she  motioned that she was pulling over. Lucky for us we were near a service plazas. We pulled in there and made our call.“Oh!” sang the Triple A guy merrily. “Well Triple A doesn't service cars on the Turnpike What we can do is call the state police who after more than an hour will come tow you off the Pike and leave you on a nice twisty secondary road from which  you can then call again and wait another hour while we decide whether or not to come save you.”We spent that first hour we spent waiting for the Staties who never came. When we finally called the AAA  again we got a new  guy who did put us right through to State Trooper Sullivan. “Wh-a-a-a-at? That's not right,"  he said when we explained what we had been told earlier. “We'll have a tow truck there in five minutes.”It came in four minutes and its driver didn’t tow us to some secondary road and leave us there. He took and towed Annie’s car clear back to Annie’s own mechanic 60 miles to the east. He was a sweet young guy with a nice smile and we gave him 20 bucks which I hope he spent on beers with his chums.