#Shakes You Like A Piggy Bank Until Stories Fall Out
i am very tired but i will do my damndest to tell you this story.
it begins as most stories about me begin, with my father, an internationally-renown figure in his chosen field, and also the same human being who, a year ago, had to call me on speaker phone from his car on the side of the road somewhere in rural maryland because he was driving up to my grandmotherās house in pittsburgh (pennsylvania) from austin (texas) and he had forgotten he was leaving on a plane flight for jordan the following morning and heād neglected to get a covid test so could i please schedule his covid test for him, over the phone, via the cvs website, while he was pulled over on the side of a four-lane highway? no, he did not have any of his insurance or vaccination card information, yes he had to get out and stand on the side of the road, yes someone rightly pulled over to this guy in his mid 70s looking very lost with his hazards on pulled over on the side of the highway, yes he then was like OH ITS FINE IM JUST CALLING MY SON all very normal things involving my father
anyway: my father has only bought one car ānewā on the lot in his entire life on his own onus. this was in the year 2000, when he drove around to every single car dealership in the austin/san antonio/houston area until he found someone at a mazda place selling a front-cab only pick up truck for $9999 cash in hand and he bought it on the spot.
every other car my father has ever owned has been a hand-me-down.
the grey car: a 1984 subaru legacy. the windows didnāt open and it had no air conditioning. in texas. my father drove it up until my husband moved to austin, then he drove it, and it eventually was sold for scrap in the year 2012 at something like 500k miles becauseā¦they no longer even Made the belts that held the engine together.
the white car: a 1988 subary legacy outback. which was a car. it didnāt smell vaguely of water mold and it had air conditioning. we inherited this car when we got married. it had 300k miles.
like any sensible people, we immediately turned around and tried to find something better. by complete coincidence, my husbandās motherās client at the time was a 96yo woman who had bought a subary outback in 1998 and then never driven it more than to and from the inspection place yearly in all the years since but wanted to get rid of it. so, we traded a decade up to a green subaru legacy outback with 15k miles.
that car was a fucking monster. it survivedā¦everything. moving cross country three times. its trunk latch was rusted shut. one of its wheels got so rusted we had to go pick through a junk yard to find a replacement. turned out only after we moved to chicago that there is literally not a single similar model in any chicago junkyard so we ended up going back to upstate new york five years later to get them to rip the right hand mirror off of the same car we stole the wheel from after it got whacked off in a cubs-game-related accident. and then the left side mirror got hit-and-ran on 90 in july of 2021. but we duct taped it on. it was fine. it passed all its inspections. we are cheap motherfuckers.
and then at the end of september of 2021 i decided to finally drive to pittsburgh to see my father & grandmother, since itās not safe for me to fly. fine. iād been putting it off for about six monthsābut it took my dad two years to get his ass there in the first place, so whatever.
i woke up at a chipper bright-eyed and bushy-tailed 5:30 in the morning on a monday, threw my ass in the pre-packed 1998 subaru legacy outback, drove to the gas station, and was on the road by six in the morning.
and, at six thirty in the morning, sitting at the toll booth of the chicago skyway, when i tried to stop idling and move up to pay the toll, my car would not start. and i dont mean āoh engine rolling over or idling or stallingā i mean dead. not lights turning on. not firing up. nothing. not an engine click. stone cold fucking dead.
āgood morning,ā i said, calling my father. āi have good news and bad news. the good news is iām on the skyway. the bad news is my car is dead.ā
āoh,ā said my father, āwell, thatās not helpful.ā
āno,ā i agreed, and then, because i didnāt have the AAA card (since my husband usually carries it) i had to call him to get our account number so i could get a tow truck.
here is a fact about my husband: i love him very much. his small curse is that if there is ever an emergency ever, he cannot be reached on the phone. i need him to answer an urgent question at the pharmacy? heās in the bathroom for a half-hour and didnt bring his phone. iām lost? heās in the kitchen and didnāt bring his phone. we had to STOP SENDING TEXTS because he wouldnāt get them until hours after the emergency passed, so now we use line.
i knew before i called him he wouldnāt answer. for one thing it was 645 in the morning. for another thing, his phone wouldnāt even ring because thatās just how it is. i sat there. calling his phone. for forty-five minutes. before he finally realized it was ringing and answered blearily and went to get the AAA member number.
AAA told me that it would be 3-4 hours before a tow truck showed up. the chicago skyway is several stories off the ground. i could not exit on foot. i resolved to justā¦sit there. and regret my life decisions. and then the hero of the hour showed up: a guy ten miles outside of his tow zone who was trying to get BACK OFF OF THE SKYWAY was like oh iām here already. iāll come get you. i have to drive this way to get off.
so even though dispatch was like ānoooooā he was like āIM STUCK ON THE FUCKING SKYWAY ANYWAYā picked me up and together, bitching the whole way about how terrible the american public school system is, we drove to the nearest AAA dealership.
i arrived at 930 promptly, walked in, looked tiredly at the receptionist, and explained: āmy car is dead. it will now turn over maybe once. i just had work done on it. it just passed its emmisions test. i dont fucking know. here are my keys. yes itās 20 years old.ā
āah,ā she said, and took the keys. āitāll be four hours.ā
āokay,ā i said, and went to michaels across the parking lot because what the fuck else was i going to do?
forty minutes later, i get a call.
āwell,ā says the receptionist, āthereās absolutely nothing wrong with it. no lights are on. it runs fine. itās literally running right now up on jacks and thereās nothing wrong with it. except for the fact that it obviously does not work.ā like any reasonable person i ask her what do i do now and she tells me great question! she has no idea. theyāre going to justā¦let it run and iād better come back and get a rental.
i go back to the AAA dealership and they help me get a rental from midway airport hertz. at the end of my fucking rope, i go to the krispy kreme donuts and buy an entire fucking dozen donuts and eat half of them sitting glumly alone in the corner of the parking lot waiting for my lyft to the airport. along the way i get lost approximately fifty times, almost walk into random airport traffic, and finally get the rental car.
by 1p, iām back at home.Ā
āwell,ā says my husband, āthat was a weird morning.ā
āyeah,ā i say. āweird that thereās absolutely nothing wrong with the car at all, though. i wonder why it wouldnāt start.ā
and then nothing else weird happened at all.