This is NOT How We Should Roll

by Cathy

"I gotta run," said Joe hurriedly as he crutched his way towards our front door, dressed and ready to go for his client meeting.

"Wait!" I stopped him short. "Are you picking them up and driving them to the coffee shop like you planned?" I reconfirmed, my eyes darting around the room as I thought this through.


"Yeah, that's the plan," said Joe mindlessly as he gathered his portfolios and laptop.

"In OUR car?"

"Yeah."
"Hold on," I said quickly running to get my jacket but didn't bother with my shoes. "I'm coming downstairs with you."
"Why?"
"Where are they gonna sit, in the kids' car seats? You're on crutches, you can't move anything."
"Oh yeah. Thanks."

My intention was to just move the car seats out of the back seat and stuff them in the trunk.
Then I saw this:

Backseat, Crapseat

Holy mother of messes. What's more, when I lifted up those car seats? I found Goldfish crackers, hair ties, more bunched up Kleenex, a tube of Chapstick, a winter glove, stickers stuck to the seat and a crumbs in every sunken leather seam.

Once, my cousin, who is religious about the upkeep of cars and runs a car wash to prove it, flat out told me: "Dayum. I can't believe you roll your ride like that. You have a nice car. You should take better care of it." Those words were ricocheting around in my brain as I nearly donned a hazmat suit to clean out the car. 'I can't believe it, either' I grumbled to myself.

"Jesus," Joe chimed in, gawking at the mess. "What the heck do these girls do back here?"

"Well, we're not any better," I retorted. "Did you see the passenger side?"
 Behold:

Front passenger seat

"That's all your junk," he quickly answered.
"Yeah I mostly drive the car, but that's NOT all my stuff," I said looking at what's made its way from the back to the front. The front passenger side floor seemed to be a catch basin for what doesn't fit in the back seat.

There we were, in front of our building out in the street instead of the private confines of our garage, where we normally park the car. All four doors and the trunk were sprung wide open, exposing our mess, much to the chagrin of our neighbors and passersby. There we were in all our glory: Joe standing on his one leg and crutches watching me diving into the back seat and with my stocking feet, shuffling and shoving what I could back and forth from the car into the trunk, which didn't look any better, by the way:

And lest we forget the trunk. Yes, that's an air cast.

I miraculously found space to shove the car seats in the trunk and almost had to sit on the trunk lid to lock it closed. "There!" I said triumphantly to Joe, who was already sitting in the driver's seat.

"Wait! One more thing!" I ran around the back of the car. I reached for the cylinder of wet wipes I kept in the back pocket of the passenger seat, snapped out a few and wiped the seats clean of crumbs and sticky substances.

"Now you're ready to roll this baby the way it should be," I said.
"Until tomorrow after school," he joked as he drove away.
Indeed.

 

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

by Patti


So, my car misses the mechanic, apparently. The bitch has started whining again - literally. Now, whenever I drive her, a high-pitched "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" accompanies my every mile. "MOM! That is so ANNOYING!" Sofia shrieks from the backseat. As if THAT isn't annoying.

But, yes, it is annoying, this "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE". I told M about it, since he is my husband and "the man" and responsible for car stuff. But can I be frank for a moment? I have single-handedly diagnosed and fixed car troubles in the past. I put my Dr. Google skills to work, and once again am totally amazed at the information I can find online. Try it: Google ANY symptom - car or human - and somebody else in the world has already searched it, experienced it, or found the answer to the problem. But this time around, I just wanted "the man" to handle it. I don't know, I was busy baking brownies, or washing the dishes, or shuttling the kid, or checking her homework, or having cramps, but I just couldn't do it this time.

He immediately denied I was hearing an "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE", even though HE WASN'T EVER IN THE CAR TO HAVE NOT HEARD IT. But you know, I guess his "man ears" are bionic or psychic, or something, because he just knew I hadn't heard it. Like any good mother does, I put the kid in the middle as my witness. "YES!" she confirmed. "There is this HORRIBLE sound; I can barely stand it!" Apparently, she hadn't heard it, either. Look at us two crazy girls, hearing things for the fun of it. Such women.

The other night I picked up M and S to go out to dinner. "Where is 'the noise'?", M asked, his voice tinged with an annoying "I told you so" delight.  I had completely forgotten about the "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE". You see, it has this weird way of only happening when it wants to, and for some reason, at this very moment, it was apparently otherwise occupied, because it wasn't there. OF COURSE.
"It happens, I swear!"
"Yes!" Sofia piped in. "It does, Papi!"
M just smiled his Ricky Ricardo "Oh Lucy" smile, smug in his absolute certainty we were just crazy.
We ate dinner, and then on the way home, my car finally decided to take my side. "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" she cried, almost more loudly than ever. Even she was annoyed by my husband's macho certainty. "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" she added, for good measure.
"SEE!" S and I shouted in unison.

My car continued to "EEEEEEEEEEE", "EEEEEEEEEEE", "EEEEEEEEEEE", all the way home, and M finally jumped out and had me pop the hood. "It looks like the timing belt". His voice was muffled as he poked around underneath the hood. "We can just spray it with a special oil and it will be fine. It's no big deal."
He got back in the car, satisfied with his genius. "AND?" I demanded. "Aren't you going to apologize?"
"For what?"
"For not believing me!"
"It'll be fine."
???

My car did the "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" again this weekend, and I called M from the road to ask him about that "special oil". "It's not a big deal," he said. "Nothing will happen if you don't fix it."
"Yeah, but I want to fix it 'cuz it's annoying as hell."
"Okay, I'll fix it. But it might also be the alternator."
I knew that word from all of my Googling, and  knew it meant trouble. "And if it's the alternator?"
"Then the car will die and never start again."

So hard to choose between these choices, "No Big Deal", or "Will Die and Never Start Again"!

So as M apologizes to me under his macho breath while he is spraying the crap out of that timing belt, I'm gonna cross the crap out of my fingers and pray for "No Big Deal".