8:45 p.m. I’m in the parking lot waving my arms and jumping up and down to get the attention of the approaching tow truck. The driver sticks his head out the window.
“Stuck, huh?””
“Stuck.” Stuck indeed. Stuck with no dinner and no yarn. Stuck.
“Well you’re jumping all over the place and you’re smiling so it can’t be that serious.”
Long story slightly shortened, I did something stupid and got my front bumper stuck over one of those cement blocker things at the head of the parking space. I called my husband, we proceeded to trouble-shoot the issue and every solution we came up with was either ineffective or fell into the dangerously-stupid category. So I called AAA and waited in the parking lot for the big yellow truck.
Now right away, I have to say at least this. I was dressed, I had my cell phone, and I had my wallet. This puts me 3 points over the last time I did something stupid to the car on the way home from ballet. No yarn though. -1 point.
So while I waited, I did the only rational thing I could do. I called another knitter and bitched about it. While I related my pitiful story to my friend, I could hear flute music coming out of the warm lighted windows of the Italian restaurant. “My Favorite Things.” I was torn between an urge to swear at the music, and to run into the place and swipe some breadsticks off the table. Maybe I could do both.
“You’ll get caught,” my friend says. “Besides, I’ve been there before. It’s a nice restaurant. Too nice to have breadsticks on the table.”
I pondered this. On my scale, a place that gives you free bread is a nice restaurant. Apparently there is a whole level above that where the bread is removed. I’m not down with that.
And it all comes from forgetting my knitting bag. You see, if I had remembered the yarn, I wouldn’t have had the car trouble. It’s like how carrying an umbrella assures you that it won’t rain. Otherwise I would have had thirty minutes of uninterrupted knit time. That heel on my second Buffy sock would be done, baby.
But I forgot my yarn. I’ve nothing to do but lob vegetative spores at zombies on my iPhone and wait for Mike the tow truck driver.
Mike arrived in good time.
“Yep, you’re stuck.”
Mike set about propping up the front part of the car with a jack.
“So what we’re going to do is jack the car up, and then over there in my truck, I’ve got a rubber chicken and stuffed monkey and we’ll... Wait, do you want the chicken or the monkey?”
I swear to god this was not hunger-based delirium. This conversation actually took place.
“Oh, I definitely want the chicken.”
“Good. So we’ll take the monkey and the rubber chicken and swing them over our heads in a circle and then–”
“Are there magic words?”
“How’s your Spanish?”
“Rocky.”
“Perfect. This is going to work great.” He looked legitimately optimistic.
Mike stood up and dusted off his hands. I pondered why it is that it’s hard to take a man in a miner’s helmet with the flashlight on top seriously.
“So then you’ll just get in the car and put it in reverse.”
“I can do that.”
“And while you do that, I’m going to push on it from the front so if you take off too fast and I fall on my face, come back and check on me, okay?”
“You got it, Mike.”
True to his word, Mike freed my car. I gave him my AAA card, and when I signed his paperwork, he glanced down at the gravel with his handy lighted hat.
“Hey, nice Chucks.”
I looked down at my sneakers. “Thanks, Mike. They’re new.”
We bade our fair wells and I got in the car with some mellow Norah Jones on the stereo and pointed the Honda homewards. It was late, and I was hungry, but all things considered, all was well enough.
So god bless AAA and a special shout out to Mike the Tow-Truck driver who fished me out of trouble without making me feel like an ass. I’m going to bed before anything else happens. I’m fresh out of rubber chickens.