It's About Your Car ....

Here it is Sunday night and I have kept .0000083 of a person hanging - if anyone was waiting for the "big ending" of my "It's about your car" moment in Jacksonville last Saturday.

Tenley and I had gone to Jacksonville to purchase pointe shoes (which we didn't end up purchasing after trying on every pink, satiny, pointy thing there but did end up ordering later in the week .... I digress). Failing on the pointe shoe quest, we headed to the mall (of course!).

It's important to know that I was driving Wayne's Silverado, a truck which is very long, making it (for me) a pain to park. Its length caused an issue the previous weekend when Tenley and I had to escape our Atlanta parking garage from a different exit, since the other exits had closed. Trust me, dodging those big concrete pillars of a parking garage in a Silverado is not my strength area.

Fast forward to last Saturday. We shopped, did "mall stuff," and managed to extricate ourselves from the HUGE Forever 21 where Tenley shopped giddily and I memorized my dialogue for my audition at FSU Film the next day. (I make her so proud when I wander around a store like that, saying things under my breath like, "You reach across the desk, pull him toward you, give him a brief bear hug, pull him into your lap, stroke his forehead and whisper facts in his ear.")

We arrived back at the Silverado, and this post it note was stuck on my driver's side window:

When I had parked, I had done my typically marginal job of parking the truck. I was close to the white line (thisclose) but was inside it. I presumed the note writer wanted to give me a hard time about my parking, like the individual who wrote me a note one time that said, "LEARN TO PARK!" Yes, it's a sore point! I walked around the vehicle to make sure that it hadn't been dented, scratched, or in some other way harmed. Everything looked okay. Tenley, sensing my mounting distress, ripped up the note into tiny pieces (which is why it has that jigsaw puzzle look now that I have rescued it from the detritus of a road trip and reconstructed it).

When I got home that night, I wondered on Facebook why I hadn't kept the note (project recover/reconstruct had not occurred yet) and proceeded to have a very amusing Facebook conversation with several people. Sensing an opportunity to rescue the bloggability of this situation, I caved and sent a text to "Elxer." 

Text of my message: Hi! It's your friend from the Avenues Mall parking lot. Just a wild guess here that you wanted to know where to mail my "expertise in straight parking" certificate (?). Have a great day. Silverado. 

Later that morning, I was standing in the office of Tenley's high school, signing her back in after running an errand with her, when my phone rang. It was him! Here's how the conversation went down:

Elxer: "I was so nice to you and left a note. Why didn't you call me back?"

Me:    "But I sent you a text!" (wondering why I felt the need to defend myself)

Elxer: "You know you had a crack in your windshield."

[editorial note here - Wayne had gotten a small crack in the windshield the previous  Thursday. It had grown a bit but the windshield replacement people couldn't come until Monday and the truck was still safe to drive - it was the choice for the trip since my Honda has a lot more miles on it than the Silverado.]

Me:    "Yes."

Elxer: "I was going to help you fix it."

Me:    "So this wasn't about my parking?"

Elxer: "No! About your windshield."

Me:    "Well, thanks, but I don't live in Jacksonville, my husband is having it taken care of today, and did you know you used the wrong spelling when you said, "Its about your car"? (just kidding about that last spelling thing!)

Elxer:  "Well, make sure they use the right glass, not some after-market crap."

Me:     "Okay, thanks!"

I'm still thinking if Elxer is on the up-and-up he should invest in some business cards, that "after-market crap" may be exactly what he hoped to install on my truck, and that his approach lacks a certain finesse.

But I'm glad he wasn't trying to berate me for my poor parking skills.

Can't wait to discover the next travel story ... maybe I should just go ahead and leave some post it's on my window and solicit thoughts for the blog!