Wake up around 7:00 AM to Chloe making cute baby noises.
Pick her up, take her upstairs and change her.
Bring her downstairs for Laura to feed her.
Go to work.
Wait eight hours to go home.
Go home.
Eat dinner.
Do various things.
Go to bed.
That’s my typical weekday. But once in awhile, life throws you a wicked curveball that you don’t expect. My curveball came in the form of a dead car battery after my eight hour wait to go home. Luckily, my mother-in-law and I work for the same organization, and since she has AAA, I went back into the building to
She called AAA for me and they said it would be at least an hour before someone would even call me. (What was I to expect for Friday at 5:00 PM?) So since the weather was decent, I took a walk around the 26 acre campus.
When I reached the back of the campus, I saw a AAA flatbed in the distance, trying to find Leon the Neon. I turned my walk into a brisk Mt. Lebanon mom power walk to make sure these guys didn’t miss me.
“Who are you here for?” I asked. The guy in the passenger seat was a total “dude” and gave me the right name.
“The car’s behind that building,” I said, pointing ahead.
“Get on the truck and we’ll go.” he said.
“Like, stand on the runner here?”
“Yeah, just hang on.”
So I stood on the side of the AAA truck as it went up the road to service my auto. I felt like a firefighter!
We got to my car, popped the hood and tried to start it.
“I think it’s the battery,” I told them.
“I think it’s the starter,” said the driver. “You wouldn’t have any interior lights if it was the battery.” So I let it go, trusting his expertise.
The driver was clearly training the passenger. “Where’s the starter?” he asked the trainee. The trainee pointed in one direction and the driver pointed in another. “Hmmm,” I thought.
So they went over to their truck and brought over something that looked like a cross between a crowbar and an elevator cable. They jammed it between some things under the hood, applied some force and told me to start it. No success.
They ended up towing my car to the garage down the street, but the garage folks couldn’t even look at it until Monday. We placed my keys into an envelope for the garage’s drop box. All of my information was written on the envelope and the guys wrote ‘starter?’ in the comments section.
Two days later, the garage folks call to tell me I just needed a new battery. And so I had them install the friggin’ battery.
So what’s the moral of this story? Tell the AAA guys to jump your battery so you can take your car to Advance Auto Parts and save $30 on unnecessary labor costs.
Annoying And Aggravating
At least I got to hang off the side of a flatbed. That was fun.
