Learning the hard way.....

Christine over at Real Men Don't Watch American Idol got me thinking about my first job and that led me to think about some of the girls I worked with and that led me to remember an incident that probably aged me about 10 years.

I had been working for a couple years and I had only been married about 6 months when this incident occurred. My husband had been trying to teach me how to drive a stick shift. Now I want to pause right here and WARN everyone who doesn't already know this.....NEVER EVER have anyone you really care about try to teach you this particular skill....especially your husband or boyfriend. He had a 1955 Ford at the time and we would go out in the evenings and he would try to teach me how to drive and manually shift at the same time. I knew the fundamentals of it....I understood what it was supposed to do...I knew where the gears were located but something strange happened between the coordination of my left foot and my right foot and I would jerk the car and of course stall it. I think I was eventually called every name that meant idiot or stupid and then some. I was called names that I didn't even know the meaning of. He said over and over that he just could NOT understand how ANYONE could be so ignorant that they could not do something as simple as this. I eventually got indignant over the whole thing and told him to stick it up his a$$ and said I'd never let him teach me another thing as long as I managed to live. My car was an automatic so I figured I never needed to know how to drive a stick shift anyway. So there!

Part of the job I did was work after banking hours microfilming checks. Well, this one particular day, one of the teen-aged girls I worked with (the bank where we worked employed seniors in high school on a part time basis) spilled red ink all over her skirt. She immediately burst into tears, saying that her mom was going to "kill" her. I didn't live too far from work and had a washer and dryer in the apartment building that I could use. The plan was for me to take her skirt (she put on a smock that looked like a housecoat that we kept at work to wear over our clothes when we had a messy job to do) and take it home and wash it, dry it, iron it and bring it back to work. Only problem was.....it was a Saturday and I didn't drive that day, my husband had brought me into work and would be picking me up later. He was at his brother's helping him work on a car. So she tossed me her keys and said....take my car, its parked alongside the building...a blue Ford Falcon. I grabbed her skirt and out I went. I found her car, unlocked it, got in and to my dismay noticed THREE pedals on the floor. CRAP! A stick shift. Now I could abort the whole mission and go back inside and announce that I was TOO STUPID to drive a stick shift or I could WING it with what I already knew. I chose to save face and try it.

This is city traffic I'm talking about. No country roads so I couldn't just take my time. I had approximately 3 miles to drive, about 4 traffic lights and 2 stop signs to maneuver. I can't tell you how many times I stalled her little car, how many times I nearly gave myself whiplash by jerking it as I started to move in first gear.....how many cars were lined up behind me with drivers chewing on their steering wheels. I was humiliated and embarrassed and was yelled at and honked at by so many irate drivers that its a wonder it didn't go down in the annals of history. There were fists being waved out car windows as well as obscenities turning the air blue. I truly expected to see hundreds of villagers with torches and pitchforks following in my wake. If I could have thrown on a red wig and sunglasses to disguise myself I would have. It was that bad.

I figured out that once I got out of first gear I didn't do a bad job so I did everything possible to not EVER go into first gear if I could possibly help it. If I didn't have to stop, then I didn't have to go into first gear. Worked for ME. After aging 10 years I got to my apartment, washed that skirt and got the ink out. I dried it, ironed it and took it back to her. I wasn't quite as bad on the trip back but I still managed to jerk and stall that poor little car several times. She was so happy about her skirt and hugged me and thanked me over and over. I just kept thinking to myself....I hope that transmission doesn't fall out on her way home tonight. Did I ever tell her that I didn't really know how to drive a stick shift? Yeah.....SURE I did. Just like I told her that I stalled that little car of hers about a hundred times.

So basically I learned how to drive a stick shift the hard way. I can drive one alright now if I have to but I don't like to.....and I still will do everything in my power to stay OUT of first gear.
Oh yeah.....and I never told my husband about my experience either. The way I figure it....if he would have been a better teacher.........I'm just sayin'

I'll Be So Glad When This is Over.....

I imagine every one of us has been bombarded with campaign ads...to the point where you almost feel like screaming...enough already! One of my personal pet peeves is the dreaded recorded announcement we are subjected to over our home phones. True, you can hang up the phone as soon as you discover what it is and not have to worry about hurting anyone's feelings.....but what if you're at work and these announcements clog up your answering machine. Twice now my machine has been filled to capacity with these unwanted announcements so that if a personal message I really wanted to receive would never come through. Personally, I don't think that this is fair. I can't believe that my unlisted number has made its way to SO MANY people.

We are subjected to filled snail-mailboxes and so many TV campaign ads that you just about know them all by heart. I have even gotten a few emails, but thankfully, not too many.

Amidst all this madness, one simply has to look for some humor. So far, the pickings have been rather slim until Friday night. My daughter called me and was really tickled. She told me that she had just received a recorded campaign call from a person who is running for re-election in our township. The name is well-known to us and is going to get our votes. My daughter went on to tell me that if I received this particular call, to listen to it and not to hang up....that an embarrassing mistake had been made.

Well, it wasn't more than 20 minutes later and I received the call. The person started out with "Hi, this is _________ and I'm running for re-election as your Township _________." It went on to cite all the things this person stood for and has done and also would like to do in the next four years. Then the voice faltered and after a few ahs and ahms.....and the sound of paper being rustled....the voice mumbled something and then said "damnit" and then another voice is heard saying something about didn't you have that written down and then the answer is no and more shuffling of papers and conversation back and forth and then the recording stops.

Oh yes I know....I shouldn't laugh at other people's embarrassing mistakes, but after so many of these irritating calls from so many different people, I was grasping at anything to make me feel better or at least make me smile and I was rewarded. Wow....this person's campaign manager is in some deep trouble I would suspect! I like this person and so I looked up the phone number in the phone book and called them at home and left a message on their answering machine, advising them of the wrong recorded message going out to probably thousands of homes. I ended the message with..."I voted for you, I think you're doing a great job....but you might want to pull this recorded announcement".

I know I'm not the only one who will be soooo glad when this election is over. And no matter who wins, there will be about half the country who is not happy. That, in itself, is going to be a difficult situation.