Snyder Than You

Sunday I was to drive myself to work. After work Sherilyn and Mom would drop the boys off with me and then take our 4-year-old with them to my cousin’s bridal shower.

Well, my car started dying by Java Jo’s, so I coasted down the hill to the side road and around the S-curve with the car off. Then I tried to start the car and get up the hill to 201 with a buggy in front of me. I could not get around the buggy.

I finally made it to Kline’s gas station and walked the quarter-mile to work, clocking in five minutes late. Either I ran out of gas and the gas light doesn’t work or else I finally blew a head gasket or something.

Thankfully, I only ran out of gas, but that’s only part of the story. After work, Mom picked me up at work and dropped the boys and me at the gas station. I got the car started, but the boys were standing beside it arguing over who gets the front seat, and the car died a final time.

Mom already left for the bridal shower, so I had my 10-year-old sit in the driver’s seat, foot on brake, and had him put the gear in neutral while I tried to push the car. It went nowhere. My 8-year-old tried to help push, then switched spots with the older boy.

The car did not move. So we walked the one mile (measured later) down to the restaurant where they were having the bridal shower, along a county road with lots of traffic, narrow berms, and no sidewalks. And the whole way, 10 kept saying, “Let’s walk back home!” My simple response  was that there was no way I was walking 15 miles to get home. Nicely, about 3/4 of the way to the party, a work colleague drove by, stopped, turned around, and picked us up. My oldest, of course, kept complaining, wanting to walk, but I made him get in the bed of the pickup truck and sit down.

We got to the restaurant and the kids needed to use the toilet. Mind you, the restaurant itself is vacant and closed but for the buffet rooms, so we went to the hotel next door. The front desk lady was nice enough to let the kids get cereal and drinks, too. Finally, we took Mom’s car (I had my own key), drove home, got the mower gas can, drove back to the gas station, poured that gas in, and the car thankfully started right up, so I pulled it to the pump and put more gas in.

We decided to take Mom’s car back and walk back to get my car, but 10 kept bugging me, wanting to walk back to the party and then back to the car again. Being me, I finally relented and let him go, thinking he knew well enough how to be careful as he ran down the road. The entire, hillly mile.

When we got there, my aunt came out, carrying stuff and advised me that the party was over, so we just hung out and I let the kids go down to the fish pond. Behaviorily, it was downhill from there for my ADHD/ADS boys, but that was the end of my own adventure for the evening.

Mind you, this is after a Saturday in which this slightly overweight, very out-of-shape 40-year-old played in a coaches’ game of soccer, injuring my toe and almost hyperextending my knee. And my wife had to go to the ER late at night to find out she may have a torn miniscus in her left knee.

Oh, and we discovered the passenger rear van tire has a golf-ball sized bubble in the sidewall. Our neighbor put the donut on while I was at work. And we drove 150 miles on that because the tire shop couldn’t not get us in when we could be there.

That is my life. Can I go back to bed now?