All's Well that Ends Well

Yesterday Jerry The Superhero rescued a damsel in distress yet again.  That damsel was ME.

It all started in 2015 when I decided to learn to back down my driveway, a feat that sounds easier than it is, especially if you don't understand we live in a house that's dramatically perched halfway down the side of a steep hill.

Not even ten people have braved our driveway in the five years we've lived here.  One of them, our 18 year-old-niece Maggie, yelled "We're going to die!" the entire time she was driving down. Her mother - my baby sister - DID back Maggie's car back up the driveway, so clearly she has nerves of steel. I'm proud to call them both family.

Fact is, without a backup camera I wouldn't have been courageous enough to attempt this insanity myself. With the camera, it is possible.  Painful, but possible.  Or so I thought.  Until yesterday.

Yesterday my positioning was off just a hair and when I got to the tricky part where there are trees on one side and a sharp turn on the other, my front tire ended up off the pavement.

Unfortunately it's been rainy here and the ground is saturated.  In my efforts to straighten the car out, a back tire ended up in the mud as well.  Of course this spot is on the steepest incline and when I tried to go forward I ended up sliding into the clutches of an evil gardenia bush.


This not being my first rodeo, I put the car in park, engaged the emergency brake, crawled over the seat and left the vehicle from the passenger's side.  Why get muddy?

I enlisted a friend to help me.  He dug mud out from under the front tire and added gravel.  Nope.  Next he wedged in a piece of board.  No go.  He shoved the car sideways while I put the car in drive.  Nothing. All that was happening was the rut was getting deeper.

"If it were my car," he said, "I'd back over the bush.  But there's a chance that your [brand new] car will end up at the bottom of the gully and I do not want to be responsible for that."

I respected his candor and was grateful for his efforts, especially because I knew if he couldn't get my car out, I certainly couldn't. I went inside and ate lunch.

When Jerry got home that evening, all he said was, "I need to move your car before it gets dark."  Three minutes later, he was backing the car into the garage.

The best thing about the experience was not that Jerry wasn't angry with me.  I knew he knew I didn't do it on purpose. The best part was that he didn't tease me.

That's the mark of a true superhero.

www.StillSwimmingUpstream.com

Confusion

Ever had a conversation where both parties seem to be speaking in English, but there's no actual communication happening?

This occurs most often for me when I am talking to people at call centers.  They usually live in some far off country, are working the night shift and are more concerned about getting me off the phone than in solving my problem, whatever it may be.  They always end the conversation with "May I help you with anything else?" when usually they weren't even able to help me with why I called.

It always surprises me when these conversations happen at home.  I came in from a walk and Kate was watching a YouTube video on tying shoelaces.  I was confused because I thought I taught her how to do that when she was three.

"What are you doing?"

" 'S fairies." she said.

Fairies?  I searched my mind to try to make sense of this comment.  I couldn't find one mental picture of a fairy with shoes on, and even if I had, can you imagine how tiny the little shoelaces would be?

"Fairies?"

 " 'S fairies, Mom.  I'm trying to learn to tie a square knot."

Did girl scouts teach her nothing?  She could sense my bewilderment. "Mother.  I got leather shoe laces for my new shoes and I want the knots to look cute."  She was getting a little snippy with me because she was attempting to watch a video and also because she felt that she had done enough explaining.

I still was mystified as to what fairies had to do with leather shoelaces but when I picked up her new top-siders, I figured it out. 

"Sperry" is embossed on the back.