Real Life as a School Subject

It seems to me that it is so stereotypical for a chick to be stranded with a broken down car that even the movies have stopped using it and have instead resorted to some hot chick who knows a lot about cars and can fix them all herself. And wouldn’t it be easy if that was the norm. On Friday afternoon I found myself in a bit of a tight spot.

You see, I was supposed to be giving a lift to a complete stranger who was an old school buddy of my mom’s and then to my absolute horror I found out that my car wouldn’t start. Now to those of you who don’t yet know, my car is my baby. His name is Dodgy Rodger (or The Rodge-mobile for short) and he has a little dimple on his right cheek from where some idiot's surf board, that wasn’t properly strapped to his roof, came flying at him while he was (correctly) parked in Strand on a warm summer’s day.

I really love my car and he has never given me any problems until suddenly on Friday he just wouldn’t start. In fact he wasn’t even responding to the remote control. So as usual, when things go wrong I phoned mommy because she just knows everything and even if she doesn’t she’ll make a plan to help me. Well, it turned out that my battery was flat and I needed to find someone who could jump my car for me.

So I phoned Francois. He is the perfect person to phone in this kind of situation because not only does he have one of those super old cars that can only be driven by a fully qualified mechanic but he also mechanics/drives a rally car. Not only that but he lives in my block of flats and I knew he would help. So I put on my super-sweet-I-want-something voice and phoned Francois only to find out that he wasn’t home and he was busy but he assured me that his flatmate was home and was allowed to use Francois’ car and jumper cables to save me.

The problem was asking Lourie to do me a favour. You see he already laughs at me for being a complete idiot when it comes to physics, and for pretty much everything else that I do and say because he’s super intelligent and doesn’t have a habit of falling on his face. Asking Lourie to save me was going to be humiliating and lousy and I really wasn’t looking forward to it but I didn’t really have any other option. (Just the thought of Lourie being my hero makes my pride feel like it’s been kicked in the face.)

So I swallowed my pride and phoned Lourie…

Well, I don’t know whether it was luck or karma but after banging down Lourie’s door, ringing the doorbell several million times and phoning him continuously I finally gave up and my pride did a little happy dance. I went back downstairs and to my luck managed to find someone to help me. This complete stranger helped me out, and gave me loads of advice and wished me a safe trip all for nothing. What a brilliant man and I must just thank him not only for saving my Rodger but also for saving my pride.

The point is that even though it took a while, and even though I did eventually manage to sort out the situation, I really hate being stuck in a situation where I am totally and utterly lost and can’t do anything about it. I have therefore decided that I either need to figure out how to fix all manner of car issues or I need to go back to Mr McCarthy (my grade five and six mechanics teacher) and ask him why the hell he taught me about the internal workings of a combustion engine instead of showing me how to jump start a car.