Miss Nancy Takes Virginia Beach

You'll need a little background to fully understand the conversation I had with Dallas this evening.  Or maybe you just had to be there.  But the background information is a story in itself.  It starts with Dallas driving home from work at 10:00 pm last Friday night in this seventeen-year-old beauty we like to call "Miss Nancy":

He was working two hours away from home at his dreaded day-job (which turned into a night job that evening - hence, the "dread"), and a huge thunderstorm had been pouring down for a few hours when I called to check on him at 10:00.  He told me that when he began driving the van home, the windshield wipers just STOPPED.  Mid-swish.  And he was in some rural Virginia town late at night in a heavy storm.

So he jimmy-rigged a little contraption out of some wire he had in the back of the car so that he could manually wipe his way home.  He thought, "Hey!  I can just stick my soaking wet arm out the window and pump it up and down for an hour-and-a-half on the freeway in this huge storm so that I can see my way home!"  And that's what he did!  When I called him, he was a half-hour away from home.

"Is your arm tired?"

"Yeah, a little."

"Are you wet?"

"Yeah."

BIG BURSTS OF UNCONTROLLABLE LAUGHTER FROM BOTH ENDS.

The laughter turned to tears when he told me that a car full of black guys pulled up next to him on the freeway, and they were like, "WHAZZUP??!" and taking pictures of him on their camera phones.  And he was like, "Yeah.  What's up?" with his arm going up and down.  The worst was when his little wire-guy started to bend in on itself and he had to refashion it.  Over and over again.  

As he got closer to home, I told him to tell me when he was pulling in to our parking garage so I could look out from the eleventh floor and see how funny it looked.  And . . . iiiiiiit was funny!  Poor guy.  But that was more like the icing on the cake for all of the scrapes he's been in since we've been here.  Without going into detail, here are just a few: 

He fishtailed all over the freeway in rush-hour traffic (without hitting anyone or rolling the car, luckily) when we first got here after swerving to miss an impending accident.

He locked his keys in his car at the start of a brand-new job.

The van sputtered to a stop late at night about a week ago when he was on his way home from work, and he got home at 1:00 am after being towed to some auto shop with his boss as helper.  Luckily, he had made it out of the Chesapeake Bridge Tunnel - THAT would've been a nightmare.

He was almost struck by lightning a few days ago when he was out in a storm on foot helping a Sales Rep look for a dropped binder on the freeway.  The bright flash, the loud noise . . . he ran for cover, and the search was called off!

He has had to move dead rats out of his way during his "day job" on occasion and has touched (and cut himself) on various rusty parts, so he's going this week to get a tetanus shot "just in case."  

Then TODAY he was driving to work when the BRAKES WENT OUT on the van.  Don't worry, Ray.  Everything's A-OK.

********************

So that's what you need to know to fully grasp the hilarity of our conversation this evening:

Dallas: "I got some new work lined up for tomorrow so you don't have to drive the Honda.  I can just take it to work, and you can drive the van around town."

Dionne: (?????)  "The van?  Why would I drive the van?  The brakes don't work!"

Dallas: "Well, they just started working like a minute ago.  I'm serious; like ONE MINUTE AGO." (blah, blah, blah, how the brakes started working, blah)

Dionne: "Are you sure you want me driving that thing?"

Dallas: "Oh yeah!  It's like in PRISTINE condition.  I filled up the brake fluid . . . I filled up the power steering fluid . . . I'm about to fix the windshield wipers . . ."

Dionne: (???)

Dallas: "What?"

Dionne: "Pristine?  Is that your definition of pristine?" 

And this is how I felt:

Actually, this is where I lay on the floor late at night talking to Dallas while he is in the shower cleaning dead rat off of himself after work.  It's pretty fun.  But it's the only time we get to talk in person six days out of the week.

Are we having fun yet???