After being held hostage in a hospital for a week, I was finally cleared to
leave. Not as easy as it sounds given the fact that I required most of my
creature comforts from home during my stay. I had everything - from
several pairs of jammies to my water pic. So per hospital policy, my box
of necessities and I were wheeled to the parking lot.
As soon as my husband started the car, he turned to me and said there was
something wrong with the car. It had started the night before. "What?" I asked.
"I don't know," he replied as he backed out of the parking space.
I rolled down the window and heard a rhythmic thump as the car moved. “Sounds like a tire,” I said.
Darling husband said no, that he’d checked the tires. Muffler? I guessed.
Again he dismissed me. Which is
common when it comes to anything manly.
The only problem is my husband has no man skills. He can barely use duct tape. But he had a plan. He’d drop off the 8 new prescriptions, take
me home, then take the car to the dealership.
Sounded good. The car kept making
that death rattle, so I thought the plan was sound. We drove about 5 miles to the strip mall
where the pharmacy is and as we drove by the ever-present homeless guy, he
called out “Hey! You’ve got a flat tire!”
Darling husband parked and we both got out of the car and sure enough, the
rear passenger side tire was as flat as a pancake. “I thought you said you checked the tires,” I
admonished.
“I did,” he insisted. “But only the
ones in the front.”
Who does that? I wondered as he dashed into the pharmacy to drop off the
prescriptions. So he comes out and I
told him we had to take it to the tire place immediately. I’m thinking he’s probably ruined the rim
since he’d told me the noise started the day before. And to make matters worse, we have AAA. It wasn’t even like he had to change a tire
himself.
So we drove across the street to the tire place. Even the sales guy laughed at my
husband. He was also stunned that
darling husband hadn’t ruined the rim.
Said it would be about an hour and a half, so instead of sitting in the
tire place, we walked next door to Chili’s to eat and kill time. So there I sit, wearing hospital bracelets as
my accessories with some serious bed head.
And while in the hospital I’d been on a very strict diet, so the smell
of spicy food was very appealing. Note
to self: lay off the Mexican when you’ve been consuming chicken broth and tea
for a week.
$128.00 later, we were on our way back to the pharmacy, then finally I got
to reunite with my own mattress.
The only thing that makes this story worse is it isn’t the first time its
happened. Ten years ago darling husband
had ignored a service light on the car when he came to collect me from a
hospital. The engine quit at a stoplight
in the heart of Baltimore and we ended up hitching a ride home with the tow
truck driver. All because he had failed
to maintain the car properly. He sees
those lights on the dashboard as suggestions.
A dangerous philosophy when you don’t even know how to check a dip
stick.
I have friends with handy husbands and I must admit, I get a tad jealous. Anything more complicated than hanging a
picture and I have to run to the yellow pages.
I even had to pay an electrician to change the light bulbs (fluorescents)
in my kitchen. Darling husband didn’t
know how to twist them into place. He
can’t even grill. When I say he has no
man skills, I mean none, zero.
But he has other wonderful qualities that make him a keeper. He’s the funniest person I know, which
off-sets his lack of other skills. Now,
if I could only find a decent handyman . . .
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