My little Double Miracle
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My little Double Miracle
I have struggled along with the Car From Hell the past few years. It's the third “Post Divorce Special”, as I call it, that I have driven since the divorce 13 years ago. I had the rattletrap about 7 years. It's a '96 Mercury Villager minivan that even God Himself was struggling to keep running and in one piece towards the end. As old cars do, particularly in wintry Michigan where they load up the roads with car-eating salt, the car got worse and worse. As I got poorer and poorer, fewer “normal maintenance” things were done on the car - like what's an oil change? Anything that broke that wasn't stop, start, left, right, and at least one door that opened just stayed broken. There was even a list of things that I was Forbidden by my son to ever use again - back window, back wiper, back hatch door, and the most unfortunate the window closest to the FAT lady even after the air conditioner died. Picture humid August heat wave, in a state that the early settlers and fur trappers described as “not fit for man nor beast”, no air conditioner in the car, only little flap-opening windows in the back, very fat lady who is both modest, and kind to others (meaning, I'm the one who should be in the teeny spaghetti strap belly shirt and the Daisy Duke shorts, not the little floozy chickie babe in the restaurant who is shivering in August in her little flip flops and less fabric than a hankie - But no, I'm nice to other people and wear those longish shorts made from TENTS, and even my short sleeves are nearly at elbows. I figure people are trying to eat, right?). And the driver's side window is VERBOTEN. If you don't put it down with two hands and a prayer, it will come off the track and may disappear in the door completely. Michigan weather is notoriously capricious, but to Guarantee a freak rainstorm on a sunny day, lose your window in the door ! After that, a sensor in the sliding door (old vans only have one slider) was wonky and for no good reason at all, all alone in an empty parking lot, it might “think” someone has tried to open the door, thereby putting on the running/indoor lights of the car and draining the battery. Yeah, weekly. On a good week. Bought a battery operated (charged in the house) car starter, called a “jump box”. A couple of years of suffering with this, and even that was getting toasted. Jumpstarting the car about every single time I had to unavoidably go out was getting seriously annoying. Ah yes, I forgot about the 8 months or so that the lock on the driver's side didn't work and I had to go to the passenger side to lock and unlock the door. It was like being an old school Gentleman who gets out of the car, walks around to open the Lady's door for her. (Like who still does that?) But I was alone. Therefore zero chance of me getting any nooky at the end of the date. (Even those fictitious Gentlemen have their hopes.) Last things were the odometer, and speedometer died a few months ago, so who knows how fast I was going. (You might get a giggle over how Miss Overhonesty here was going to feel about selling the old heap when she could prove how many miles were on it.)
So... I finally got my disability money a year ago. The weird thing about disability money in the US is that, even though it is YOURS, your DUE, that you starved or were homeless while waiting for it to come through..... those government idiots tell you you have only 11 months to get rid of almost all of it. Or.... you might get audited and found to be having “assets” at the end of that time. If so, they will then deduct from your monthly checks up to the amount that THEY figure you are still hoarding. Now.... a reasonable, responsible person SHOULD do just that. Try to keep as much as possible - for emergencies, right? So that I am not a Further drain on taxpayers if I blew it all on a Carribian, Carribean, heck, a trip to Paris, and now can't pay for heat next winter. Right? But that's not how the system is set up. So I move to option 2. Paid off the IRS the mounting debt of ten years from an innocent tax mistake. Whew ! Was thinking I might have to be a burden to my kids LONG before I was supposed to be. Then to get another vehicle. Worried about that for an entire YEAR. (Worry, meaning tears, lost sleep, much hiding my head in the sand....)
No one who doesn't know about cars should go out alone and buy a used one, and surely not a woman. But there was no one to help me. (More sand.)
The old rattletrap was getting seriously, almost comically, broken down and unreliable. I'm convinced it was Satan's gleeful torture of me, which I deserve, and God's having to smack me upside the head to get me to stop procrastinating and face this huge hurdle - which I also deserved.
I finally am tortured to the point of starting to actively learn about used minivans and attempt to find one. Friday a week ago: Off to test drive a potential candidate. I stop at the corner fast food place, since the guy is busy on his lunch shift. After lunch, back out to the car, freezing cold day. Car does not start. But of course! Get out the battery charger. No luck. Back to the engine, fuss with it, back to the car, no luck. Please tell me I am not 400 yards away from the used car dealer and can't get there, and please tell me I don't have to call him up and beg him to come jumpstart my car because my charger won't work either ! Talk about weakening your bargaining position, right? So I prayed. Literally. Not the first time this car has been prayed over for one thing or another. Trust me, I'm not Miss Uber Christian, public pray-er, but this car would drive Satan himself to desperate measures. One more try with the really dead battery thing. YES !!!!! Get back out, (my back is dying at this point and fatty is rather overheated), unhook charger, get back in, fight with seat belt, hope car makes the whole 400 yard drive in one piece. (Yes, about 400 yards. Way too many hours on a football field have left me with a rather good idea of the length of 4 fields.) I start to back out..... BAMMM !!!! Hit a car ! You HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME !!! Someone had just pulled into the parking lot, on the wrong side of the space to drop someone off. I'm too distracted to decide if I really, really looked or not. Wouldn't matter. I'm at fault, since I'm backing out of a space.
Gets worse. Comically worse. As always. Driver and his mother LIVE in my apartment complex, my parking lot. I can never live this down. Worse-er.... Driver works at that Arby's so I can never eat there again. Fabulous ! (Stop giggling, Donna !)
Finally get to the car place, decide to leave the rattletrap running to charge the battery while I test drive the new candidate (another rather old minivan).
Cut to this past week, Saturday night. (Hey, I'm trying to cut the story short.) Phone rings at 8:55 PM.
Pastor of a Lutheran church several miles away: Yes, we would love to take you up on that offer to teach our little mission team a few basic balloon animals before we head off to India with all those eyeglasses for the needy. It's a great idea.
Me: Great. When would you like me to meet you folks for the lesson.
Pastor: Well, we're leaving Thursday, so it rather needs to be this Sunday.
Me: You mean tomorrow, as in, in the morning?
Off to the storage room of my one bedroom apartment. “Storage room” meaning that one bedroom, no furniture, no bed, which has shelves from floor to ceiling with Legos saved for the kids, juggling equipment, clothes that will never fit me again (now that all that post-divorce deprivation has caused me to build so much “character”), and the entire huge closet stuffed with BALLOONS. Opens balloon drawers in the middle of the night, and peers sleepily and half blindly around for an assortment of balloons for this godly errand. She finds what? (Did I mention Satan and his glee already?) MOUSE TURDS. Puh-lenty of mouse turds. A herd of turds. Let's just say I am NEVER going to attempt to mouth-inflate those balloons, not that I usually do. Biggest fear at this point? Not the mice. I'm sure they will be hiding. It's the other side of the room with the few thousand dollars of lovely quilting fabric I managed to sneak past the world's most restrictive and miserly (rather rich) engineer husband during the marriage. Doesn't that sound like a colorful and cushy place to make nests? Herds of nests? No time to deal with that that night. A little creeped out wondering what the herd has been eating, since the room is just storage. Do they leave the room and come to my kitchen? Exactly WHAT good is that cat who is forbidden to go into that room, since she pees in odd places in there? Does fatcat even know we have mice? Mice traipsing past her nightly to the dirty dishes? I know one thing, they don't eat enough off those dishes to be noticed. Perhaps they, like the cat, like my sons, and maybe like the ex-husband just won't eat my cooking. If it's lucky enough not to be burned, it tends to taste.... well,.. like BALLOONS.
So, I drag the huge balloon cart out to the rattletrap, over some slight snow. Praying as I lumber onward sleepily that the car will actually start. Surely God will honor my intended good deed and give me a pass on getting the car started, right? I HAVE been up all night preparing the balloon assortment and finding cheat sheet for the lesson, and markers, and pumps, and hauling away mouse turds. I walk across a patch of some odd crunchy black glass right in front of my car. I remind my sleepy self to remember to back out of the space and not drive over the glass. My luck, right, and I'd have a flat tire within a couple of weeks of desperately trying to dump this car. How funny would that (not) be?
Oh look, how convenient ! I don't have to muscle with the sliding door that barely works, after first opening the front door that doesn't like me... because......... (wait for it......) There's a huge, gaping HOLE in the slider where my window is NOT ! Inches of snow IN my car. *Pats her sleepy self proudly on connecting what that crunchy black glass was. Some jerks had taken OFF my window, and carried it in one piece, all the way to the front of my car, and a little turn to the left to be directly in front of my car. It's not that someone bumped it and the window popped off and fell - not a speck of glass beside the slider. FABULOUS ! A couple of weeks maximum before I dump this heap and a car accident and now a missing window on a freezing morning. *Drives off, thankful for all that extra blubber she has packed on for some emergency some day in her future. Hey, I thought it would be for some famine like in Ethiopia, but blubber is warm, too. Still beats a beached whale stuck in rush hour traffic in that August heat wave with no working window on the driver's side. (I find my silver linings where I can.)
I get to church and start complaining about the vandalism and how comical that it has all happened right when I'm desperate to dump this rattletrap.
Are you wondering when, if ever, I'm going to get to the miracle part I promised? It's good - double miracle good !
Bing! Up perks the ears of some retired guy in the background. “My son really needs a vehicle. You have an old car you want to get rid of?” Yes, and No. I have to get a replacement one first. And I know nothing about the process, and I can't do it by myself, or I'll get really gypped...... “Well, I can go with you to look for one.” I get the stranger's phone number. After the balloon lesson, driving to another place to do balloons (for a free dinner at someone's house - a house with 5 wild kids all wanting balloons), the phone rings. It's ANOTHER person from the same church who wants to BUY the old heap! Old guy says he's been Walking to work all winter. Says he has a nephew who's a mechanic. Says he will help me look for another car, and how's about this Tuesday to go looking. *Glynis thinks to herself - just 2 days.... how much can go wrong in just 2 days, right? Especially if I stay home all Monday !
The 5-kid family's hubby puts plastic on my window hole. (Really crappy job, but just till Tuesday, right? And grateful for the help. Doesn't even make it the 5 miles home, at slow speed.) So, Monday, I have to go 18 miles to see my kid - the one with the right hand in a cast from the broken fingers and the nearly severed tendon from that power tool incident. (Good luck doesn't run in our family, eh?) - to beg him to fix the window better. For once he has no infant at home, and so we go to where we THOUGHT his friend of a friend worked selling used cars, in the vain hope that that dealership (which I thought would be too expensive) would cut us a “friend-break”. Wrong dealership. Typical of my luck.
Also typical, of slimy used car dealers, the guy just “happens” to have just what he thinks I'm looking for - and it's standing right next to him - the only car in the indoor showroom ! Yeah, that's a believable coincidence. What??? No paper in the window, but it just “Happens” to be the exact price I blurted out as my top possible price? (Shot myself in the foot from square one, right? That's why stupid women shouldn't negotiate with slimy car salesmen on their own.)
LONG story shorter..... I just HAD to buy that car. I SOOoooo wanted this all to be over ! And even though the car had the ONE thing that was definitely on my DO NOT WANT list, I had to have it. I HATE leather seats ! And I'm NOT paying for a snobby feature that I hate. So, I will have to remember to put a SPATULA in the car by mid-Spring ----- To peel Miss Fat Thighs off the hot leather seats, even though my tent-sized shorts are really long.
But the leather seats are the very LEAST of the bells and whistles this car has. Still has a cassette player - that works. I still have cassettes. Also has a CD player - that works. I have a few CDs. Whoo hoo ! It's even more embarrassing than that. It is going to be way hard to “cry poverty” with this leather seated minivan with the TWO sliding doors - one of which opens with a button. And there's a working VCR player for movies in the back ! (Remember the poor shlub whose speedometer didn't even work? Talk about upgrade !)
WRAP-UP
> Old car found vandalized on Sunday morning. Why, God?! Why me?
> Complaining on Sunday, promise of help finding a car, 2 people want to take the second burden (getting red of old car) off my hands. Is this why the window, God?
> Monday, wrong dealership. Probably not God, we think to ourselves, since both of us are idiots. Find and buy a Fabulous replacement. God, you Rock !
> Tuesday, sort of have to cancel my appointment to go look for a car with the old guy, because I send the day taking him to bank, to get few hundred dollars to BUY my old heap. More money than the scrap yard would offer for metal or parts. New rattletrap owner is also THRILLED. It's no small miracle out of the blue in his life either!
> Three days, double miracle. (Not to mention the balloon animals going to India.)
I maintain that it is far more than a freak set of coincidences. Albert Einstein has been quoted as saying, “Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.” ― Albert Einstein, The World as I See It
Notwithstanding that haircut, I think the boy is pretty schmart !