We went looking for houses a couple of days ago. You can read about the not-so-funny part of that trip HERE. There were a couple funny parts during the trip (as you can probably guess by now, hardly a day goes by without something funny happening in my life). One was the trip to Red Robin and the other was pretty much the whole trip.
Let me give you some of the serious background before we get into the good bits. Our last couple of trips to the city in the van cost us about $100 in gas. Not entirely true but it goes like this. I put in about $30 to get us out of this town to where the gas is (hopefully and usually) cheaper. Then I put in $70 and (hopefully) fill it up. There's the $100. That will get us around for the day and home and probably get us around for a couple of weeks at home.
We decided to take the new car this time. We weren't going to be picking anything up that required the size of the van and figured it would save us on gas.
Now you're caught up, let's get to the story.
We wereen't out of the driveway yet. We were right about here, just like this picture (only we were in the car). I released the parking brake and started to let the car roll down the driveway.
"Your car's too small," my wife said. It's official. The car is mine. The van is hers. The car is small. The van can double as an air traffic control tower. The car is a stick. The van is an automatic so you can drive and talk on a cell phone at the same time.
"I like it," I said.
"We're too low," she says. I can't say anything because, well dammit, she's right, sort of. You see, when Dave (you remember Dave, right? If you don't, I'll post his picture in a second to remind you) was showing us the features of the car, he told us about the stadium seating. The back seats are a bit higher than the front seats so the people in the back (Trey?) have a better view. I didn't tell Dave that I couldn't care less what the people in the back seat can see. Sometimes it's better if they can't see where we're going. All the panic and screaming gets on my nerves when I'm trying to drive.
<------ Here's Dave. Say, "Hi Dave!"
What Dave didn't tell us is that he lied. The back seats don't sit higher than the front seats. Au contraire, mon frere. In reality, the front seats sit lower than the back seats. It's like they put one of those little portable seats that you can take to the stadium with you so that you have some back support. Yeah, they put those in the front of this Saturn and call it stadim seating (it's true but misleading). It's fine though. I put a football game on the radio and cruise down the road and it feels perfectly natural.
So, I can't say anything about how low the seats are. After buying the car, I drove with my butt raised off the seat so that it wouldn't drag on the ground.
I shift into second and my elbow smacks into her forearm. She has claimed the armrest as hers. I should have seen this coming. She likes armrests. I don't. In the van, each seat has its own armrest and you can put them up or down. Mine is up, hers is down. The car, as she has said, is too small for such amenities. There is a center console. This is important terminology because it's not a center "armrest."
When I get in the van after she's been driving, I slide in and my arm smacks into the armrest.
"Who keeps putting this armrest down?" I ask like it's a community vehicle and it will be impossible to track down the culprit. I sweep the armrest up and out of the way with my elbow so I can drive. She probably gets in the next morning and goes to lean on it and falls into the space between the front seats.
"Who keeps putting the armrest up, dammit?" (She really does cuss more than me if you're wondering why the change of words, a habit she has tried to curb since our son became a walking parrot.)
We went and looked at several houses and went to several stores and every single time we started from park and I shifted into second, my elbow smacked into her forearm and she would jerk it out of the way.
"Sooner or later, I'll figure that out," she said one time.
"Or else I can just learn to drive like this," I said and I leaned forward quite a bit so that my arm went straight out from my shoulder and then straight down from my elbow to the gear shift. I looked like a broken marionette. Some guy going in the opposite direction is looking at me like, "What the hell is wrong with that freak?"
I rolled down the window and yelled out, "The car's too small. She needs the armrest. You see . . ." I couldn't explain anymore because the people within earshot had missed out on the first part of the story and the first guy was long gone, probably practicing imitating me so he could tell all his friends about the dork he saw pulling out of the Red Robin.
So, we drove all over the place. Back and forth. North and south and back north again. My wife watches gas station prices whenever we drive. She keeps a mental note of the cheapest one. I never look. I've been writing a financial blog for a couple years now and I never look. I would like to think that I would look if I needed to but my wife does all the looking so I never have to. Anyway, she calls out the prices as we go by as if I have any clue what the last price she told me was to compare it to. When I need gas, I just ask her, "Which one was cheapest?"
Since getting the car, I've gone about 400 miles and it's getting time for gas. Not a mile away, back the way we came, I know is the cheapest that she's called. We walk out of the model home and get in the car. We take off, I smack her arm with my elbow, and we go get some gas and that's when her tune changes.
$32.
That's what it took to fill the car up and there's going to be enough gas in the car for our trip back to the city on Tuesday. All of the sudden, my car is a cool car. She likes it. That is so much better than the van. She's going on and on about it as she files the receipt. I start the car, smack her forearm with my elbow, and get us on the road.
This, it turns out, is the cheapest gas that she has *seen* up to this point. A minor technicality but an important one.
We get down to a major intersection about a half mile away from where we just got gas, which we have gone through not 30 minutes earlier because we are backtracking once again, and the light turns yellow. Okay, it's more of an orange, maybe reddish-orange color. It's the color where if you are in a small town and the only cop on duty is sipping Dr. Pepper out of his 64 ounce mug that has been filled twice this shift, you stop. In the big city, that same color means that I need to step on the gas so that I don't get rear-ended by the 3 cars that are going to be following me through this light.
I don't want to surprise them all and stop, having cars hitting cars into cars, and then have some big guy in a cut off t-shirt with a Brooklyn accent come up and kick my ass. "Doesn't Saturn come with a trunk monkey," I'd scream before the first blow landed. No need pissing off the city folk for stopping when the light wasn't red (for very long).
While the van may allow you to look into the cabs of semis so that you can make obscene gestures at the truckers, the car has the benefit of a low center of gravity (because my ass is inches from the pavement). This means that I can run just barely make this yellow light.
The force does pin my wife's face against the window on her side of the car. Instead of being mad, she says, "Gas was cheaper at the Maverick."
"I thought you said the last place was cheapest," I said, straightening the car out so that she could talk easier.
"We didn't go by here," she said.
"What do you mean? We're going back the way we came," I said.
"We didn't go by here like this, " she said, pressing her face back against the window. "So I didn't see it."
Who can argue with logic like that? I shifted the car into 4th, smacking her arm with my elbow, and we continued our search for a house.
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