...all that instruction I did on training a certain someone how to change a tire was all for naught. I suppose if I had been unreachable she might have been able to manage--but I have a feeling she forgot ever having been shown anything in the first place, and would swear upon a stack of Bibles and upon her own life she'd never been shown. Look, if she can run over something and immediately start blaming someone else for it, she's capable of any variety of delusions.
ANYwho, I was all happy Friday afternoon when I got the call from Reba--yes, for some reason Oldest can't just call me, it has to be relayed through Mom--who told me Oldest had a flat, and that the hubcap had come off, and it sounded like the whole car was rattling when she parked it. And as I mentioned earlier, Oldest wondered aloud to Mom if someone had flattened her tire in the parking lot. Hey, sometimes even the paranoid can be right!
In my mind, I imagined she'd gotten a nail in her tire, somehow managed to flip a hubcap, and that was it.
I packed up and made the trek to the high school parking lot, where I found her in the car at a parking spot near the end of the row closest to the field house. Parked, saw the front passenger side slouched down like the innumerable open-mouthed goobers wandering around with backwards baseball caps.
She hopped out, and we walked around to the flat side--again, I expected a deflated doughnut, and intened to fix it with the handy can of spray goo I keep in the trunk.
What did I find?
A giant gouge of a hole, and the tire completely separated from the rim. It looked like she'd driven into the sharp pointed end of something with a sharp pointed end, at about 110 miles per hour.
"Ashley! This isn't a flat--you had a blow out! You ran over something! How'd you do this?"
"I DON'T KNOW!! I DIDN'T HIT ANYTHING! SOME GIRL SAID I LOST MY HUBCAP AND I GOT IT! DO YOU NEED MY HUBCAP!?"
I knelt down and examined the rim--big concrete-rough gouge on the side of the rim, and looked at the hubcap--corresponding abrasions there.
::sigh:: She'd hit something with it--hard--hard enough to completely shred the sidewall and kick off the hubcap, but she was so intent on blaming someone, something, else that she had completely erased any memory of what she was doing or anything else. When she gets like this, there's no reasoning with her, no way to get an honest answer. "Where did this happen?"
She waved her hand over toward the front of the school, and again asked me if I needed the hubcap.
"No."
I pulled out the spare and the jack, and put the carcass and bones in the trunk. "You aren't going to put the hubcap on?"
What IS it with her and that hubcap!? She seemed to have taken her salvation of the hubcap as proof that she has nothing to do with any of the preceding events. "No, the spare tire doesn't get a hubcap--when we get the tire changed, they'll put it on."
I followed her up to Sam's where I dropped a nice $60 replacing a tire I'd purchased only a few months ago. At least she did say she was sorry, which is a far cry from the screaming fit she pitched last week when she determined that because we wouldn't spend $2,000 to send her to some sort of money-wasting educational enrichment thing in Washington for a week that we hated her.
::sigh::
Left the car, took her home, went to the bank, came back, took her to her play rehearsal, came back home, got Reba to take me back to Sam's to pick up the car. She dropped me off, I got the car, drove home expecting to see the van there, since Reba was supposed to come right home. Not there. Parked Focus, saw note on door--"Gone to pick up Ashley." Apparently, rehearsal was cancelled for her.
AFTER ALL THAT, the rest of the weekend was uneventful, and thankfully so. I used my newly-invented Pillow Head Sound Arrestor Saturday morning when I heard Boy click on cartoons, and I am almost ashamed to admit that I slept all the way until 10:00 o'clock. I haven't done that in years and years and years. It sure was nice. Sorta. A certain member of the fair sex to whom I am wed begrudged me the extra hours, but I was so blissfully out of it, I never heard her usual Saturday morning Dropping of Fully Laden Baskets, or her Loud Opening of Doors, or her Loud Slamming of Doors, or her Rackety Dropping of Piles of Plastic Clothes Hangers, or her Clattering of Clanging Metal Cookware.
After awakening and dressing, I had a few more errands to run, to the OTHER bank, where I saw famed radio and television personality, Ken Lass, then I came back and there was laundry, and other things I can't remember, and I listened to the football game which was nice, AND THEN--
--we loaded up the truckster and went to Penney's to shop for blue jeans. Even in the South, there does come a time when it's too cold and you just can't wear shorts. We stayed there until very, very late. And spend very, very much money. But they all have enough pantses to wear for a whole week.
Sunday, again, not much to do, and I actually got to read a paper! Did have to make another run to Sam's, this time to get snacks for yet another weekend campout. This one I won't be going on, though--it's for the kids at church--who (along with several adults including Miss Reba) will be heading up to Guntersville this weekend. I stay at home to sit with Cat, although I predict a good time will be had with much silliness. But, as I was saying, had to go get a variety of snack items both for our kids and everyone else's, too.
Managed to do that, and got a sample of stuffing from one of the sample ladies. She told me all about it as I tried to leave, then asked me if I wanted to buy some stuffing.
"UHmm, no--I don't need any today. But thank you very much!"
She was disappointed, I think. But I really didn't need a five pound box of stuffing.
Home, unload, then back up to church for the kids to have their meetings on various things, then after worship they had a get-together at another family's house, while Mom and I and Cat went and had supper at Ruby Tuesday. Only four tables occupied, and yet the service STILL seemed lackadaisical.
Oh well.
All in all, an okay weekend, if you discount the vast outflow of money involved.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at November 6, 2006 10:54 AM