Quick question: do you have to actually know your neighbor before you call in that big favor?
Asking for a friend (or vice versa)…
“Uhhh, I don’t know if my boss will be cool if I just drop off 300 pounds and $1300 worth of shower walls just on the side of the road.”
Well, at least that’s what I claimed the driver of the big-ass semi-truck being used to ‘deliver’ my shower wall panels said when I demanded that he leave them with me. And let me remind you that this is a continuation of the remodeling shenanigan from last week (catch up here!), in whence ‘with me’ in this case did not mean the Farmstead–our new country property where we are literally putting our pre-elderly parents ‘out to pasture’–where the shower wall panels in question ultimately needed to be.
Oh, ho, no! It would have been too simple to deliver the product to the address on the package, right? Instead some dumbo at the shipping company put my goods on a over-sized truck that couldn’t navigate the back-roads leading to the Farmstead. At least not without taking a ton of tree branches and/or getting the truck stuck trying to turn around.
So, then, did ‘with me’ mean the garage of our Town House, nestled in a neighborhood with wide, well-paved roads? Not in the least, Dear Reader, not in the least…apparently, again, ‘too many tree branches’ and ‘too narrow roads’, according to ‘M.T.’, the mother-trucking truck driver.
Ah, then that must mean that I told him to drop it off ‘here’, meaning I was at the Lowe’s Home Improvement store across the street from my neighborhood. You know, the store I ordered it from in the first place. Surely, they would be like, “cool, that’s something you ordered from us, we’ll hold onto it for you until you can come back with an appropriately-sized vehicle”. (Quick reminder: I did not have an appropriately-sized vehicle at my disposal. Hence the tension this little 2-act drama we find ourselves in).
Nope, that was shut down by Ass. Man. Paul.
…
Wait, what’s that you say? “That’s not how you properly abbreviate ‘Assistant Manager! ‘Asst. Mgr. Paul’ is the correct full title of that particular dipshit of a mid-level manager.”
Nah…I’m good with ‘Ass. Man. Paul.’ It suits him well.
Anyways, pardon the digression–the point is that AssMan wasn’t about to do me any favors that day.
…and thusly I found myself on the side of the road across the street from the gas station near the entrance to my neighborhood. That’s where ‘with me’ was. Just a strip of grass in the middle of the woods, a full mile from my house.
And I claimed that M.T. would have been reticent to ‘deliver’ my 8’x6′ wooden crate and package to a location that didn’t have a proper address.
But I was lying. Really, he was like, “Cool. If that’s what you want, let’s rock n’ roll this off of here…”
He was so cool with the idea–an idea that I would think could put his career as a delivery driver in jeopardy–that once we got the package safely off the truck and out of the road, and I was like, “Alright, do you need me to sign something saying that I received it?” he simply said, “Nah, you’re good. I can see your name here on the package…”
“Soooo, Mom…could you step out on the porch for me?”
It was about to start raining, and I had a hot date with My Beautiful Bride in about an hour–it was time to find me an appropriately-size vehicle. But of course, I personally couldn’t go find one. I was stuck on the side of the road guarding my prized possession.
Which, in retrospect, I find hilarious, that I anticipated that such an unwieldy and cumbersome item could possibly become the victim of a crime convenience. What did I think was going to happen? Some youths were going to ride by on their bikes and a see prime opportunity to renovate the bathroom in their treehouse? And then what? They call their parents to come pick them and their loot up? Hah.
Anyways, My Beautiful Bride was still busy with her day job as a health care executive (#HumbleBragAboutMyWife), so I was calling in the favor from my pre-elderly mother, who was at our house watching our girls.
“I’m already on the porch. What’s up?” she replied.
“Look across the street. Is John’s big-ass truck in his driveway?” I breathlessly asked her.
“No, I don’t see his truck in the driveway.”
“What about Joey? Is his large-and-in-charge pickup parked in front of his house?”
“Who’s Joey?” Mom asked quizzically.
“Dangit, Mom, John’s neighbor–the brown house kitty-corner across the street from us.”
“Oh. Okay. The big brown house, you say? Well, I don’t see any truck th–“
I didn’t have time for any of her trademark soliloquies.
“Yeah, okay, so what about Matt’s truck? Do you see Matt’s truck?” I impatiently interrupted her.
“Who’s Matt?”
“Arrgghh, you’re killing me, Smalls! Alba’s dad! Eden’s dad! You know–just a few door’s down from us.”
“East or west?”
“West! West! WEST!”
“Oh, right. Well let me go check…”
Thirty seconds later…
“So which house is theirs again?”
“Ackk! How do you not know which house is theirs? It’s the one with the bay windows 2 or 3 houses down from ours–look, I just need you to tell me if you see any large-bedded vehicles when you look down the street. I don’t care who’s it actually is.”
“Uh, let’s see…no, not really…”
“Not even the cop who does power-washing as a side-hustle?”
“Which house is his again?”
“Just past Matt’s–wait! It doesn’t matter. We just need a neighbor with a truck–any neighbor will do.”
“Hmmm…well, there’s the house as you go around the bend on our street. I’ve seen a truck in their driveway. Maybe they’ve seen me and the girls taking walks around the neighbor and will recognize me and not be freaked out by my request to borrow their truck…”
“You mean on the other end of our street? Across from Natalie’s house? And also across from the Highway Patrol officer’s house?”
“No, no, the house next to it. The neighbors with the RV.”
“Great thinking! Those bungholes are always parking their huge RV in the middle of the street and I’m barely avoid crashing into it every day. They definitely have to have a big enough truck to haul that–and they owe us a favor for not reporting them to the HOA like we should!”
“Okay, give me a few minutes to walk that way. I’ll call you back…”
“Great! Thanks!”
In the meantime, I needed to hedge my bets in case she wasn’t successful.
Dials My Beautiful Bride…
“What’s up? I’m work–“
“No time to explain–does Lynn have a truck I can borrow?”
“Huh? What are you talking about? Lynn, my co-worker?”
“Yes, that Lynn. She lives in the country, so surely she or her husband have a pickup.”
“Dear, I don’t think they have a pickup…”
“Well, what kind of country folk do they think they are? Imposters, I say!”
BUZZ! BUZZ!
“Oh, that’s Mom calling me back! Gotta go!”
“Okay, see yo–“
*click*–or whatever sound cell phones make when you abruptly End Current [Call] And Accept Incoming [Call]
“What’s the good word, Mom?”
“‘Jesus loves you’–but that’s not important right now.1Fun fact: this fabricated line from our conversation was inspired by the movie Airplane! The guy who lives on the corner–I think he said his name was John–has a truck and is willing to help you. He needs to know where you’re at.”
“Wait, which house? Luna’s house?”
“Oh, yeah, I guess it is the house where we always see Luna, though I haven’t seen him in a while…”
“That’s because Luna died last year, Mother (Rest in Peace, [Lion] King)–but, that’s beside the point. Tell John that I’m right across the street from right before you turn into the gas station. He’ll know it’s me when he sees the CRV with the flashers on. I’ve already about got ran over 3 times.”
“The gas station in our neighborhood?”
“Jeez, Mother, YES, that gas station.”
“Okay! He’s on his way to you…”
“I’m flashing my lights! I’m flashing my lights!” I shouted at the inadequately-sized pickup in front of me, in the bed of which my precious shower walls were precariously shifting about.
John had graciously helped me load up the huge parcel–first the wooden pallet, then the package itself–in the eager-and-willing-but-almost-too-small cargo area of his pickup. And the plan was for me to follow him in my CRV, that way if it were to fall out, at least it would hit me and not some innocent vehicle.
Of course, we had agreed upon a method of communicating any shifting of the cargo. That would be ‘I’ll flash my lights.’ Which I was furiously doing, to no avail.
I rolled down my window, and tried frantically waving my arm at him, but that did no good either.
Fortunately, he barely made it to our house without it falling out.
“Hey, I was flashing my ligh–“
I cut myself off. When you have a good neighbor like John come swoop in and save your ass, maybe critiquing his form is not the best course of action.
“What’s that?” he cupped his lobeless ear and leaned in towards me.
“I said, ‘I would really like to give you $20 to show my appreciation’. Clearly, that’s what I said…”
“Thanks, but no need for that! It was a pleasure just to help out a neighbor.”
My Dude is true a hero. The kind of hero that will inspire you to get a pickup of your own so you in turn can help out neighbors caught on the side of the road with their pants down in the pouring rain.
Well, maybe not a pickup. Those things are expensive af. Perhaps a 5’x8′ utility trailer…
The point of the story is sometimes you should just be grateful. As in, ‘grateful for your mother’s mad knocking-on-every-door-in-the-neighborhood skills.’ Sure, all those Saturday mornings sacrificed in service of our church’s bus ministry may have desecrated the only sacred time slot in her children’s lives (and the lives of other poor unsuspecting kids), but you gotta admit: The Jesus had a plan for all that pain and suffering.
Totally worth it…right?
Riiiiight…
Content created on: 15/16 July 2023 (Sat/Sun)
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