Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Another Of Those Calls No Parent Ever Wants

When the phone rang at 1:47am, i opened my bleary eyes and seriously thought about ignoring it.  Seeing it was from #1 Son, and knowing what was probably coming next, i really wanted to ignore it.

No, i did not ignore it, i answered.  Yes, i'm probably stupid.

"Hey, mom, I'm okay, and I didn't get in a wreck, I didn't hit anything, but my car just completely shut down on the interstate and I don't know why, but I think it might be the starter or the alternator."

Okay, where are you, i'll get there as soon as i can, we can get it towed to Kevin and Lenny's and they can work on it Monday.

"I'm up north at the C exit."

All the way up there?

"Yes, I was -- wait, hold on, a police officer is pulling up behind me."

(Muffled conversation with the officer.)

"Okay, mom, the officer is going to push my car down the C exit."

As i said, i'll be there as soon as i can.

At that point, i hung up and got dressed.  As soon as i could was just over 15 minutes, because of course someone had left the Jalopy almost on empty.

The phone rings again as i'm on my way to the C exit, which is in a part of town where a lot of people won't go in the daytime, much less this time of the night.

"Mom, I've got good news and bad news.  I thought it was the starter or the alternator, which is fine because I can afford to pay for it, but now I realize it's neither of those, and I think I'm just out of gas!"

How did that happen?

"Well, Wayne was behaving like a jerk and getting drunk, and so I wanted to get Darla and her kids to a safe place.  Annie [age 2] and Ben [age 4 months] don't need to be around that, and neither does she, so I took her up to a friend in the next city, and I wasn't paying attention to how much gas I had, and I think I'm just totally out of gas."

That's a good thing, actually, because we can deal with that, and it means we don't have to figure out how to play musical cars tomorrow.

Upon my arrival to the empty parking lot in a bad area of town where he was waiting, the officer who had pushed him to safety pulled up and made sure i was actually his ride.  Thank you, Officer!

He jumped in and we got back on the highway, and realized too late that there was an open gas station at the next exit.  We went closer to town and found an open Circle K, where #1 Son purchased a one gallon gas can, and one gallon of gas.  Back up the highway we went, and back to his car.

It was his first time purchasing, filling, or trying to use a gas can.  Think Three Stooges funny, as it was one of the new types that i'd never used before, either, and it took us a while to get the gas into his car.

Blessedly it started right up, and we went straight up to the next highway exit where we had seen the other gas station too late the first time.  #1 Son went in to pay for gas, and the oddest thing happened.  He was pumping the gas, or thought he was, the numbers on the screen of the pump said he was, but no gas was dispensed.  His card had been declined, and i think the reason is the purchase at one Circle K in one part of town of a gas can, then the purchase of one gallon of gas to put in it (two separate transactions), then another attempt to purchase gas at a Circle K in an area further north, and i think the bank's computer freaked out and thought by that algorithm the card had been stolen.

He put the card straight into the pump, typed in our zip code, and it accepted the card and let him get gas.  While doing so, two fights almost broke out, one between two other customers, and another between a customer and the store attendant.  As i noted, this is not the area of town most people want to be in at that time of the night.

Heading back to the highway, we took a wrong turn, came back around, and finally got sorted out and back to the house.

Once there, he couldn't find his phone.  His new phone.  His brand new $749 plus tax iPhone that he had just bought two days before.

While we tore the car apart, he fumed, "Is this G-d's way of telling me I need to pay more attention to Him!"

Well, son, i won't tell you turning to The Lord will solve all of your problems, but it might make a lot of them easier to deal with.

He found the phone, finally, half way under his seat, in one of those places you can barely reach.

If you want to know why i had such a bad headache Sunday, that's why.



Today is:

Be Kind to Humankind Week:  Touch a Heart Tuesday

Chatter Champion Announced -- Fairy Calendar

Constitution Day -- Kazakhstan

Day of Satisfying the Hearts of the Ennead (Nine Major Gods) -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (date approximate)

Festival of Charisteria -- Ancient Roman Calendar (a day to give thanks)

Frankenstein Day -- in honor of Mary Shelley (Interesting, when juxtaposed to the next entry.)

Huey P. Long Day -- Louisiana, US

International Day of the Disappeared -- Latin American Federation of Associations for Relatives of Detained-Disappeared

International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances -- UN

International Whale Shark Day -- WiseOceans has more information

National Holistic Pet Day -- celebrating the growing interest in natural/holistic medicine for animals

National Toasted Marshmallow Day

Popular Consultation Day -- East Timor

Santa Rosa de Lima -- Peru

St. Fiacre's Day (Patron of box makers, cab drivers, costermongers, florists, gardeners, hosiers, pewterers, taxi drivers, tile makers; against barrenness, fistula, haemorrhoids, piles, sterility, syphilis, venereal disease)

Talk Intelligently Day -- holiday thought up by someone tired of non-intelligent conversations (maybe with co-workers?)

Victory Day -- North Cyprus; Turkey
     Turkey's Hellespont Swim -- one of the world's busiest shipping lanes is closed so that over 300 participants can swim the Hellespont from Europe to Asia, a Victory Day commemoration of winning the Turkish War of Independence in 1922 against the Greeks


Anniversary Today:

Roman Polanski marries Emmanuelle Seigner, 1989


Birthdays Today:

Cameron Diaz, 1972
Michael Michele, 1966
Michael Chiklis, 1963
David Paymer, 1954
Timothy Bottoms, 1951
Lewis Black, 1948
Peggy Lipton, 1947
Frank "Tug" McGraw, 1944
Jean-Claude Killy, 1943
Elizabeth Ashley, 1939
Warren Buffett, 1930
Kitty Wells, 1919
Ted Williams, 1918
Fred MacMurray, 1908
Roy Wilkins, 1901
Shirley Booth, 1898
Huey P. Long, 1893
Claire Straith, M.D., 1891
Ernest Rutherford, 1871
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 1797


Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Anna Lucasta"(Play), 1944


Today in History:

European leaders, in an attempt to end war "for all time", outlaw the crossbow, 1146
One of the largest naval battles in history, during the last decade of the ailing, Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty, begins between the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders, 1363
Capture of the entire Dutch fleet by British forces under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Sir Charles Mitchell, 1799
Founding of Melbourne, Australian, 1835
Founding of Houston, Texas, 1836
Hubert Cecil Booth patents the vacuum cleaner, 1901
The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in south Louisiana, the longest bridge over water (continuous, not aggregate) that is not also a viaduct, opens, 1956
The Hotline between the leaders of the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union goes into operation, 1963
Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1967
Guion Bluford becomes the first African American astronaut in space, 1983
NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces, 1995
A commercial expedition to raise part of the sunken British luxury liner Titanic ended in failure, 1996
Harley-Davidson celebrates its 100th anniversary in Milwaukee with a parade of 10,000 motorcycles, 2003
India and Pakistan agree to release hundreds of fishermen and other civilians in each other's jails as part of their ongoing attempts to negotiate peace between their nations, 2005
Sumatra's Sinaburg volcano continues to erupt, two people are killed and 21,000 are evacuated from the vicinity, 2010
In Chile, 33 miners trapped half a mile beneath the surface make contact with their families for the first time in three weeks since the incidentally, 2010

7 comments:

  1. oh, gosh... glad it turned out okay after all that stress.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well it certainly could have been worse. As one who has run out of gas, I'll bet that never happens again.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You know he's going to have a kid just like him and then he's going to tell you how bad his headache is and you're just going to stare at him.

    Been there and done that.

    Have a fabulous day. ☺

    ReplyDelete
  4. That would give me a headache as well. Sounds like you did an excellent job of keeping your cool.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Triple A would have brought gas, towed the vehicle, etc. It doesn't cost much for a basic plan.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yes, that sounds like one of those kind of Sundays that you just want. to. sit. quietly... Thank goodness that there was fuel and that you could find the Ipad! Yeep!!!
    Cat

    ReplyDelete
  7. So sorry for your stressful evening, but you seem to be a good anchor in an angry storm! I did not know phones could cost so much!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for meandering by and letting me know you were here!
Comments on posts more than a week old are moderated.
If Blogger puts your comment in "spam jail," i'll try to get it hauled out by day's end.