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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
The missus and I returned from our annual holiday jaunt a few days ago. Every year, we take a week — whether we need it or not — and speed through a seven-day trek through (at least) four towns to visit various immediate, extended and perhaps-not-extended-quite-enough family members, in-laws and assorted hangers-on.
This year, the odyssey lasted a bit longer, when our flight home was canceled and we drove the thirteen hours home the next day.
(Not thirteen hours straight, naturally. We did stop for lunch. We’re not animals.)
That was Sunday. And after spending the lion’s share of it stuffed inside the business end of a rented Chevy Impala, I wanted nothing to do with cars for as long as possible. Including mine.
Luckily, I had Monday and Tuesday off work. And so it was a full ten days that my poor Nissan sat idle in the parking lot, humbugging through the holidays. I finally trundled out yesterday morning to have a look, and to clean the Christmas snow off the old girl.
And, I guess, to go to work. Eventually. If there’s time.
From the look of things, the Boston area — or at least the immediate parking-lot area of my little bit of Boston — got around three inches of snow in my absence. I don’t know how that happened; it was sunny when I left. It’s like I can’t leave the damned city without some cloud pooping all over the joint.
Anyway, I scraped the snow and ice off all the important car parts — the driver’s side window. Half the windshield. A little circle around the door handle. And, of course, the wipers. It was sunny again yesterday, but you never know when those pesky clouds will come back with a full bladder and an eye on your ride.
“I yanked the lever all the way down, activating the wiper mode usually reserved for tropical monsoons or undersea spelunking.”
I set off for the office, and noticed the few square inches of windshield I’d cleared were a little grimy. So I gave it a spritz of fluid and set the wipers loose to clean things up.
The wipers didn’t budge.
I turned them up a notch. Nothing.
I yanked the lever all the way down, activating the wiper mode usually reserved for tropical monsoons or undersea spelunking. You know the one, where you imagine the blades are going “WUUU-hoo! WUUU-hoo! WUUU-hoo!” at you.
Except they didn’t. They just sat there, motionless. Paralyzed. Dead.
I tried some things when I got to the office garage. I swept some more ice out of the way. I lifted the wipers to make sure they weren’t stuck. I even slid them halfway up the windshield, like people who are apparently smarter than I am do before a snowstorm. And then I went to work, to let everything thaw out.
But I knew. It was too late. The wipers were shot, plain and simple. I confirmed it later; I drove all the way home with the wipers blasting, fully expecting to turn a corner or brake too hard or bump a bus and get it:
WUUU-hoo! WUUU-hoo! WUUU-hoo
But no. Four miles later, as I parked at home, the game changed. This was no longer a rescue mission, nor a nursing back to health. The only thing left was to make the funeral arrangements.
And to put them off as long as possible.
Seriously, I just got back from a big trip. I cleaned off ten percent of a car. And I worked, like, at least three hours yesterday. I can’t handle a trip to the garage. Not now. Not today. Or tomorrow. Maybe Saturday, when leaving the car for a few hours isn’t such a logistical hassle. Or next weekend. Or May. May sounds nice. I’ll be ready in May. June, at the latest.
So now I’m watching the weather. Yesterday was beautiful. Today’s nice. Clear and crisp, with a chance of clouds. Very little threat of rain, which is good. And tomorrow’s pretty good, too. Probably. The Weather Channel waffles a little sometimes. “Thirty percent chance of showers”? What is that? Take a stand, already. No rain till summer. Make it happen, meteorolowizards.
Meanwhile, I’m hoping to at least make it to the weekend. Two trips to and from work, and all of a sudden it’s Saturday. That’s the plan. And if it rains or snows in between, or a bird craps on the driver’s side windshield during one of the drives?
Then I calmly pull over to the side of the road, put on the hazard signals, and abandon the car. Just get out, dust off my hands and chalk it up to the fickle moods of Mother Nature. I can always go out and buy another car. One with working wipers.
But not until Saturday. At the very least. I’m not ready yet for a hassle. We just had Christmas, for crissakes.
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(The ‘Eek!Cards’ explan.)
Also! The latest Zolton @ ZuG piece is out. Limber up and get shiny for Zolton’s Facebook Pranks on Fitness Companies. It’s more fun than a barrel of medicine balls!
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(The ‘Eek!Cards’ explan.)
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(The ‘Eek!Cards’ explan.)
Permalink | No CommentsThe nice thing about getting older is that you sometimes get a win that you didn’t expect, or gave up on long ago. The bad thing, of course, is that it’s often too late to matter.
Consider Christmas, for instance.
I remember as a young little guy getting Christmas presents from my family. Most of these were great — just what a precocious six- or nne- or fourteen-year-old kid would want. Toys, books, games and the like. But there were always a couple of “need” gifts — important things, but not so interesting to a kid on Christmas morning. Things like underwear, or dress pants, or most distressing of all: socks.
“Ripping through a big pile of reindeer-festooned wrapping paper to find a six-pack of knee-high sweatsocks rips a tiny piece of childhood out of a kid’s heart, bakes it in a fruitcake and dribbles it down the front of Nana’s slobbery holiday frock for dessert.”
Socks for Christmas is the most quintessential non-exciting gift. It’s the Father’s Day necktie of a child’s December. We need socks. We know we need socks. We go through socks like Santa goes through supportive plus-size trusses. We just don’t want socks as a present. Ripping through a big pile of reindeer-festooned wrapping paper to find a six-pack of knee-high sweatsocks rips a tiny piece of childhood out of a kid’s heart, bakes it in a fruitcake and dribbles it down the front of Nana’s slobbery holiday frock for dessert.
Okay, so it’s not that bad. Still. Socks for Christmas? No fun.
Fast-forward a couple of *cough* dozen *cough cough* years, and the family Christmas presents are different now. We trade food mixes and artisan olive oils, interesting books and small appliances of various indeterminate functions. Sometimes, we even buy each other logo sweatshirts or team hats.
But no socks. No. Socks.
Only, we don’t have a rule or anything. We’ve never even talked about it. It’s just sort of happened for the past twenty years or so that no socks have been exchanged at Christmas. Not with my family. Not with my wife. And not with the in-laws. But what with the law of averages, the finite number of appropriate gifts and no formal rule on the books, it’s only a matter of time. Eventually, people are going to run out of other ideas. This Christmas, I opened every present with trembling fingers, expecting to find the mother of all calf-covering horrors inside.
It didn’t happen. But a few people did apparently run a bit short on ideas this year, as I received several Amazon gift cards. Some people don’t like getting gift cards. Those people probably give socks for Christmas. And birthdays. And graduations. Bah.
Personally, I think gift cards are great. You get to open a little present, and then you get to buy whatever it is your little heart desires. So as soon as I got back home from the holidays, I logged into Amazon for a little post-Christmas Christmas.
At first, things went well. I found a couple of books, and a trinket from my wishlist. And then… then I ran out of steam. My wife found me, sitting catatonic, staring at my monitor. I filled her in on my dilemma, and she tried to help.
“Well, you could buy more books.”
Yeah. But I’ve got a few I haven’t read already, plus the couple in the cart. I’d better not.
“What about music?”
I could… but I’ve got this other site I get music from. And I pay up front, so if I want to buy anything, I should really get it from there instead.
“Computer games?”
I get those from Steam. And they take PayPal, so I can buy them without you seeing how much I spend on them.
“WHAT?!”
Nothing, dear. Any other ideas?
“Hmm. Well… you always need socks.”
Crap.
She was right, of course. But this was Christmas. I don’t want anyone to give me socks for Christmas — and I damned sure don’t want to buy socks for myself. I might as well give myself a wedgie and jump headfirst into the nearest trash can.
I sat for another hour, desperately browsing. I had the world at my fingertips, and free money to burn — but I’d run out of things to want. So I did the unthinkable. I bought myself socks. For Christmas.
And then I bought some underpants. And a belt. I was an ugly necktie away from a full set of gifting nightmares. And I did it to myself. Somewhere inside, ten-year-old me just mooned the remains of my childhood. And then peed on them.
Ah, well. At least my feet will be warm. And I’ve got three hundred and sixty shopping days to figure out what the hell I want next year, in case it happens again. The clock is ticking, pissed-off little kid me. Get cracking.
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