Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Just Another Day in My Life

     Yesterday DH needed a little help.  From time to time he asks me to help him accomplish some grand scheme of some sort or another.  There's nothing small about the way his mind thinks!!  Most of the time it's nothing too hard--or frightful.  But on other occasions...  It's flattering to think that he feels I'm up to the challenge. 
     So what did he ask, you wonder.  A little background first...  Quite a few years ago we had a box (delivery) truck for our business and we were looking at buying some carpeting for our RV and had driven the truck to the wholesale carpet place about an hour from home.  It was a Sunday.  What we didn't know was that they closed early on Sundays and had to turn around and head back home after we discovered that they were already closed.  On the way home, there we were just driving along minding our own business when a huge deer (a doe) leaped out of the grassy median and right into our path.  DH grunted and I understood that he meant "duck and cover".  I let out a little yell upon impact and got a mouthful of safety glass (the windshield).  Thankfully, DH only got a broken hand.  (I probably fractured my ankle but being the anti-medical person I am, I didn't mention it until we were safely home and hobbled around for the next 6 months until one day it just stopped bothering me.)  Unfortunately, the truck was totaled!  Everyone who saw the truck said that it looked like we hit an elephant not a deer!  We had the truck towed home where it's been parked and used for storage.

    Now to the present...  DH decided that we needed to get this truck out of it's parking space and get it ready to be towed so that he can hook it up to the back of our RV and use it to haul some things we need to move.  In order to do this he had to hook the truck up to our Jeep Commander with a tow chain and pull it out of it's spot where it's been parked all of these years.  Guess who he wanted to steer the truck while he pulled?  Yup.  That would be me.  I learned long ago that it's usually just easier to go along happily with his crazy ideas uhm, grand schemes.  And so that's what I did.  The thing that I noticed first was that the steering wheel didn't turn but turning the key on fixed that (duh!).  The next thing that I noticed was that the brake pedal just stuck to the floor when I pushed on it.  So he insists that the brakes are just stuck and we need to drive it around our circle driveway to free them up.  Boy was I not liking the sound of this idea!  He assured me that if the truck gets away from me and I can't stop it I can just run it into a tree.  That is so against all of my thought processes and desires for safety.  You know I'm not an amature stunt car driver and am, after all, just a girl!  No matter!!  So off we go down the driveway.  The direction we were going goes downhill, then turns out into our little gravel road in front of our house and then back uphill and up to our house. 
     As we take off and head downhill I start to become alarmed at how fast I was starting to go and began pushing on the brake with all my might.  Nothing.  By then I'm squealing very loudly and hanging onto the steering wheel with my right hand while fumbling around for the emergency brake with my left hand.  No luck (the emergency brake turned out to be on the right side of the steering wheel above the shifter but it wouldn't have mattered anyway since it didn't work either!).  I started picking up more speed and kept creeping closer to DH in the Commander and was wondering how I was going to be able to turn out onto the gravel road without losing control or flipping over.  Fortunately the road was really squishy from all the rain we've gotten in the past week so that slowed me down a bit.  And there was no traffic either--which hadn't crossed my mind until I was right there.  And all this time I'm still squealing and pumping the nonexistant brake.  The Commander finally gets further away, the chain tightens back up and we turn the corner back into our driveway to go up the hill and back up to where we started.  Amazingly the truck stopped at the top and I survived.  I was shaken and done with that whole idea!!  Fortunately DH decided on a different plan and I was free to go. 
     Son #4 and #5 had been outside during the whole ordeal and I asked them if they heard me "screaming".  They said "YES!"  And then Son #4 said "I heard you.  And I thought..."  He couldn't bring himself to go any farther but I finished for him saying "You thought I was a gonner didn't you".  We all had a good laugh and DH thanked me for being a good sport.  But boy are my legs and arms sore today from trying to make that brake work and wrestling that steering wheel!!

3 comments:

~she~ said...

Wow...that's a crazy story! (Both of them!) I know my Hubby wouldn't have had nearly as much confidence in me. I definitely would have insisted he call upon a man to steer the truck. Glad you made it through OK!

Michelle G said...

OH I am rolling laughing....seriously!

Here's a bit of a story....my husband (also crazy as a bed bug...I mean "inspired") showed me how to drive our drill rig (foundation construction...HUGE truck) I didn't mind backing it up on job sites for him but REFUSED to take it too far.
This one time he asks me (over and over) to please move it just one job site to the next (1/2 a block at most)so FINE....I'm petrified...I get it there no problem...I look out to wave at him and WHAMO the entire back end of the truck falls into a sink-hole area that they had just covered up with fill. SCARED ME TO DEATH!!! It was entirely their fault....but I haven't driven it since!!

GrammyK said...

Yeah, that sounds like something that would happen to me. DH tends to think of me sometimes as just "one of the guys"--probably because I can do a lot of competent masculine things but still. It's nice to know that I'm not the only "trusted" wife!! Ha Ha!! It does feel good that DH has such confidence in me.