Geek, car, and english and this post is an example of what happens when the “car” branch of the family (the males) don’t speak english.
On Thanksgiving I worked my ass off and everyone seemed to enjoy their food. I was exhausted after having worked all day on it and having stayed up all night the night of the 22nd. I don’t know why I couldn’t sleep. Dreading going to Walmart I suppose. It was bad. Real bad. And the Tempo had to have one last little fit before she “retired”.
My Aunt and Uncle brought the car down we’re buying from them. It’s a pretty little thing. White exterior with a medium grey exterior. 96 Pontiac Grand Am. Well taken care of. The engine had been replaced and around $1000 dollars of work had been done on it last year including replacing the electronic computererized whatever it is. The windows don’t roll down… need to have them fixed, but the heater and air worked great. Joshua’s reaction was ooohhh nice when he saw it. lol
Anyway my Aunt and I went to the convenience store that’s right outside the apt complex so she could get some cash. I drove. When we got back I couldn’t get the damned key out of the ignition. You have to understand my driving that car after driving the 90 Tempo was like dropping a caveman into an F-16. There were times while driving the Tempo that I thought I was going to have to do a Fred Flinstone and put my feet through the floor to keep the bitch moving. It wasn’t delicate. At times I had to be rough. After an hour of everyone trying to “teach” me how to drive and stop the car they found out that a penny had been dropped down into the shifter. They got it out and I tried again. I still couldn’t get it to work. I had been told various things by my Uncle and Brother over the past hour. Such as “you’re bringing it in under too big a load”… WTF does that mean?!?! Or “push the shifter all the way to the front”.. okkkkkayy. So I “lightened the load” and tried to push the shifter into the next fucking state. You see I speak english. I don’t speak “car”. I knew that park was at the front of the shifter. I’m not an idiot. They were telling me, at least to a person who doesn’t speak “car”, to push it up as far as I could. So I did. Then they told me to “jiggle” the shifter before I tried to remove the key. So I “jiggled”. That worked. Everyone was happy. They left and I actually got to take a nap and sleep later that night.
The next day Richard and I decided to take Joshua out for a short spin around the apt complex. We didn’t go anywhere else because oddly enough the tag agencies decided to ALL take the weekend off and we can’t get tags until Monday. We aren’t going anywhere until it’s tagged because there are three cops in this interior little suburb of OKC and we know that as soon as I took it out of the complex one of them would be on my ass in a New York minute. They don’t have that much to do I guess… anyway on with my tale. I drove it around the complex. Joshua oooo’d and aaaaah’d. He was very impressed. I decided to attempt to stop it and take the key out. I took a deep breath…. and did it. Without jiggling the shifter. I went on instinct and it worked fine. Both times. It helped to have actually slept and not having the male contingent of my family hanging over me like a vulture waiting for a lion to die on the savannah. Bless their hearts but thats what happens when they don’t speak english or geek to me. Geek I understand. There were a few times that day that I wanted to tell them to FOAD. I was not LOL’ing, ROFL’ing, or anything else. I was not having a good time. My heat sink and fan were overheating and I needed time to relax. After rebooting I was able to do what needed to be done. After being married to Richard, a geek, for 8 years I have lost the ability to speak “car”. My family used to own a car body shop so I could understand some of it. Not so much now.
The next time the male contingent of my family start talking to me in “car” I’m going to hold up a sign that says…
No habla car… then again they probably won’t understand what THAT means. 