I started thinking today about how the typical human being at one time or another stretches the truth a wee bit to make him or herself not look quite so…well…human. This phenomenon seems to be particularly true when it comes to women friends of mine and car “incidents.”
I recall the time when the commissary (that’s the military word for grocery store) on base had placed an order for way too many Coke products. To clear the overstock, they had marked each 24 pack to only one dollar.
Many of us took advantage of the sale, but none like my friend. With teens in the house and a husband deployed overseas, she decided to stock up like a crazy woman. Reasoning that it cost her only four cents per can, she bought forty 24 packs. In her Miss Helluva-Steal Homemaker mind, this would save her a lot of dough and time in the long run.
With a compelling adrenaline rush from a good deal, she neatly stacked her 11,520 ounces of soda into her truck and headed home with her “liquid gold.” Picture this white soccer mom bouncing along in her now Low Rider car.
She decided to pull into her driveway backwards to make unloading the forty cases an easier task. Then the unintended and unforeseen happened. She ran into…or should I say scraped the bumper over…the curb.
Not calculating the extra 720 pounds of cola in her truck, she pulled forward and ripped the back bumper more than partially off her car. It was tacky enough to require a quick fix to keep it from dragging and igniting sparks on the pavement. After all, she had to get to an orthodontic appointment for her middle schooler.
All of us friends learned from her trial and error. She made sure to inform all of us that neither Scotch tape nor packaging tape work to hold up a cold bumper in the middle of December. She ended up using a red bungee strap and, deciding that it looked completely ridiculous, tried to make it a statement by sticking a wreath and fake poinsettia on it.
She pulled up to the middle school where her just-turned-teenage son was completely humiliated. Any of us that deal with kids this age can get a clear vision of the scenario. She claimed that he slumped down in the seat the entire way to the orthodontist just in case someone could see him in the now clown vehicle.
Another friend of mine had other tactics to soften the blows of her accidents.
Already running late for school, her daughter had forgotten something and asked to run back in the house to grab it. With the car still parked in the garage, she jumped out of the back door.
She jumped back in, but this time through the other back door. Unbeknownst to my friend in the driver’s seat, her daughter had left the first exit door open. Evel Knievel (her name has been changed to protect her identity) backed (or should I say peeled?) the car out of the garage. With a crunch and a pop, the door was ripped off.
But not totally. Just enough to not be able to drive to school pretending she was in an open door Jeep. My buddy did anything a logical mother would have done (after mumbling a few expletives!) She grabbed some water skiing rope and tied the inside handle of the mangled door to the opposite back door (you know, the one that was closed properly in the whole ordeal!)
Come to think of it, I think that the rope was also tied to the toddler car seat and maybe even three children.
That night she told her husband that someone had tried to steal the door off of their car. I think he even believed her because how could anyone make that story up?
Later in life she would accidentally leave the gas pump’s spigot in her tank and drive off. The gas cap door ripped off, and she tried the same approach. She couldn’t believe someone had stolen that little door off of her car.
I don’t think her husband fell for it the second time.
By the way, my Coca Cola-buying friend talked to her husband over the phone the night of the bumper incident. He was stationed in Iraq, so she—like so many of us military wives—didn’t want her husband to worry about the little things at home so he could concentrate on his safety.
“Well, honey,” she started, “I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that I had an accident with the car. After a healthy pause she sighed and said, “The good news is that I’m okay.” And with no mention of soda, she left it at that.
