Who Pooped in the Peanut Butter?

This post isn't about poop in the peanut butter at all. I just used that phrase in conversation the other day and have been looking ever since for an excuse to use it here. Couldn't think of one, and then remembered that gratuitous poop references are not exactly unheard of here at The House and I, so there you go.

Part of the reason I haven’t written much these days is that life hasn’t been handing me any decent punchlines. By which I don’t mean to imply that I’m depressed or anything, it’s just that those magically absurd moments I usually use to zing a piece back home just haven't happened. I’ll give you an example:

The hated Chuck (TFT) has been leaking power steering fluid. For a couple months now. I can’t afford to get him fixed – and I figure the worst that happens if his power steering blows for good is that I get a complete upper body workout every time I run out for a quart of milk – so I’ve just been tossing bottles down his gullet in a quixotic attempt to silence that infernal squealing.

Huh. Maybe I would make a good mother, after all. Except when the kid squeals you can't whack it on the dashboard and tell it this is why you never wanted it in the first place. So maybe not.

It isn't as bad as it sounds. I only go through about a bottle a week, and I think they're only like a pint or so a piece. Hang on, I'll check... nope: a cup and a half. See? That's even better (oh, and the Stop Leak brand doesn’t, by the way, in case you’re wondering). Plus I don’t even pour it in there all at once. I pour a little at a time, just enough to stop the screaming, and only on the days I plan to actually drive. Because a cup and a half a week is still a cup and a half a week, and I don't want to end up with a poisonous lake of the viscous stuff in my driveway (such as it is) come spring. Because who needs to explain a thing like that to the owners of dogs and children that visit in the summertime and run around my yard?

So instead, every single time I start my car I have to pop the hood and pour some fluid in. Got some on my glove the other day, too. Now it’s all over the dashboard, window, radio controls – you’d be surprised how many things a person can manage to touch with a single finger in a single five-minute car ride. Not to mention, on the subsequent mile-long walk in freezing weather, one's eyes and ears. And, yes okay, runny nose.

I’ve got it all down to a science now. I mete out a wee bit in the morning, drive Chuck (TFT) to the parking area, and let him piddle most of it out on public property all day while I walk and ride to work, and then ride and walk back to him again. By the time we’re driving home at the end of the day, he’s almost piddled out, and we start the whole thing over in the morning.

I know this sounds terribly unvironmental (yup, I made it up), and although if you gave me a few minutes I'm sure I could come up with a bunch of ways to excuse my behavior, I just won't. Because the fact is: I don’t care. There came a point ages ago when the whole notion of environmentalism became a rich man's game, a socially acceptable way of judging other people -- especially uneducated people who can't afford things -- and that's why it's a game that I refuse to play. Well, that, plus the lazy and cold-hearted thing. Screw polar bears!

(I will point out, however, in case it might make anyone else feel better, that I have never once, in my entire life, used air conditioning inside my home.) (Technically, that isn't true. There was that one sludge-pit apartment in South Boston. But that was just one room, for just one summer.) (And the window unit was a gift; it wasn't my idea.) (Plus the reason it was a gift is that we really, truly, honestly couldn’t breathe.) (Which may have been just because it was, you know, South Boston.) (But I digress…)

Meanwhile, I have never been the most particular about keeping my car clean to begin with, and now the inside of the truck is a veritable graveyard of spent STP bottles. Every morning I have to crawl around the back and shake them until I find one that has something in it. And you might think this would be a good time for me to go ahead and throw the old ones out, but … nah.

The worst is when I’m driving along and a rogue empty decides to pop up and say hello to my feet. I don’t know if the little buggers get cold or if the empty Dunkin’ Donuts bags and Baked Lay’s wrappers are just dreary company, but it happens all the time. And although I’ve been fortunate so far to have not yet had the experience of coming sole to bottle when I’m reaching for the brake, it’s not what I’d call exactly fun to grope around under the steering wheel while simultaneously trying to maneuver over a bridge and into rotary traffic. It’s like trying to change into your pyjamas while you're still brushing your teeth, only with much better odds of injuring someone besides yourself in the process.

What? You don’t you do that? It's only me, then? Huh…

Anyway, so here is where the punchline should come in. Here’s where I ought to tell you that today I actually did get in an accident, or that something else equally afunny happened. I finally cleaned Chuck (TFT), say, and when I did I found enough loose change in there to fix the problem. Or our mechanic friend George came by and did it for nothing, in exchange for me promising to never mention his name on this blog again. Or I heard on the news that it wasn’t poop in the peanut butter after all, but rather a massive case of power-steering-fluid poisoning, and that they’re this close to zeroing in on the source. But none of those things happened.

With this, then -- along with myriad other ho-hum and punchless lines that I've been living -- I've just been carrying on my rank routine and waiting for some sort of shoe to drop that might make the whole thing at least marginally entertaining to someone besides me. Or including me, for that matter. But so far, as Yukon Cornelius used to say: nuttin'.

Except for the poop in the peanut butter thing. That shit was pretty rich.

As a Matter of Fact: Update

I found the receipt! It was in the driveway. Must've fallen out of the car when i went to fill it up with beer yesterday.

Anyway, apparently a new tire doesn't cost a hundred dollars (if you click on the picture to make it bigger, you can read it fine):

Seriously.

Jimmy.

What the hell?

As a Matter of Fact...

Somebody screwed me on the tire deal, I'm just not sure who it was.

Yesterday Guy did not try to sell me a new tie rod, or manifold, or engine mount, or any of the other woolly things I was certain he was going to try to pull over my eyes, but when he called he did say that:

A. My right front tire was completely bald. This was the newest of the four of them. The one that blew and was replaced in June. So why was it the baldiest? It was also the one I thought was wobblingest, however, so maybe it wasn't balanced right when it was mounted, and that's why it was bald? But Jimmy wouldn't do that to me, would he? Jimmy the tire guy?

And, worse:

B. My tires were four different sizes. Which would certainly explain the wobbling. Um, Jimmy? Seriously. What the hell?

Apparently one of them was the right size, and still good, so I only needed three new ones -- which he would "rotate" (I assume this meant he moved the single keeper?), balance and align for $250. This didn't sound too bad to me, considering one new tire costs $100, rotating and balancing four old ones costs about that, too, and an alignment alone runs $60-$80. I told him to do it. Johnny said why didn't we just go ahead and get the fourth tire so we'd have all new ones, but -- unable to think of a reason fast enough -- I just told him to shut up.

With tax it came to $265.something. I imagine he really just sold me the tires and threw the rest of it in for free, but I don't know. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a look at the receipt?

Huh.

I thought I left it in the car, but I can't find it...

If U're Good, I'll Even Let U Steer

I think I feel a rip off coming on...

Chuck (TFT) has been wobbling at high speeds for a while now, and we have a three-hour trip planned in a fe days so I thought I'd take him in and get his tires balanced so we wouldn't have to worry about losing one and getting stuck in Rhode Island any longer than is strictly necessary.

There is a tire place is right up the road. not Jimmy's, which I wrote about before, but it does have the advantage of being close enough to walk home from. I planned to drop off Chuck, then walk up to the post office, and -- if he hadn't called me on the cell already to tell me he was finished -- to walk home and wait for him to call. I planned to tell him when I dropped Chuck off that all I wanted was the tires balanced; that, if he found anything else wrong, I can't afford to fix it, so he shouldn't even ask. I planned to ask him to just please make a note of anything he noticed and carry on. I planned on being so savvy and smart.

Instead, what happened was, the building says "TIRE ALIGNMENT CENTER" on the side in big blue letters, so when I walked in, I accidentally said "I need an alignment" without even noticing that I misspoke.

"What makes you think so?"

"Well, it wobbles if I go above 55, 60 or so."

"An alignment won't fix that."

And with those five words, with me still not noticing we were talking about two different things, my brain and my brilliant plan went out the window. He asked me what kind of car I had, and I could not remember (I said Plymouth Reliant; it's a Voyager). He asked me for my license plate, and I recited two different ones from two different cars, neither of which was Chuck (TFT), but I couldn't remember this one until he was outside writing it down. And noticing it was a minivan and not a K car. By the time I handed him the keys, I felt like I should have just put my wallet on the counter, my pants around my ankles, and my palms down on the floor.

So now I'm not getting much done while I wait for him to call and tell me Chuck needs a thousand dollars worth of work. I plan to tell him, no matter what he says, that I meant to ask him to balance the tires; I plan to tell him to please just rotate them and do that and nothing else. I plan to make up for the girlie idiot I behaved like before.

But I'm practicing grabbing my ankles, just in case.

The End of the Ordeal

This story starts here, continues here, and this third part is the conclusion. Thanks for your patience. Three days is a long time to wait to read a story about a tire. I know you all must have lost a bit of sleep for all the wondering...


Little-Truck AAA Guy assured me – as had the Wrecker Man, and Johnny – that there was nothing wrong with the car besides the tire. He said the whompada-whompada I heard was just what a really flat flat-tire does, especially at 65 mph. He described it so well for me that I took his word for it, and took his advice. I moved Chuck to another parking spot. At one mile per hour.

whomp… a…da…(god, I hope you all are right that it’s okay to do this) whomp… a…da… (almost there, now) whomp… a…da…(phew!)

Made it!

Little-Truck AAA Guy moved over with me, and sat there shooting the breeze while waiting for dispatch to call back and tell him how long it would be before the tow truck came. I wished he’d leave me alone so I could go back to the New Yorker article I was reading about talking computers. (Hm. No misanthropic implications there, what?) They finally called and said the Big-Truck AAA Guy would be there in 20 minutes, and so Little-Truck Guy left – but not before admonishing me to be there when Big-Truck Guy came. As if I hadn’t been there all along. As if there was, for that matter, anywhere else to go. And as if I wasn’t positively bursting for a pee.

One should always keep a bottle of water in the car for emergencies. But in emergencies one should never, never drink it!

Big-Truck AAA came in less than 20 minutes (man, am I never going to get to finish this New Yorker article?). I filled him in on the whole ordeal up to now, asked him, too, for an opinion on that axel (he agreed with everybody else) and told him that I wanted to be taken to my tire guy, out in North Quincy.

My tire guy just might be the only honest businessman I have ever managed to dig up on my own – although, technically, Johnny dug him up and handed him to me – and he is so good and decent as to restore anybody’s flagging faith in humanity. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was glad that this was happening, but the way my life’s been going lately, I wasn’t exactly sorry for the chance to get a dose of Jimmy’s Tire.

I had Big-Truck AAA Guy pull in to Jimmy's the back way so he’d have plenty of room to put me down – to put Chuck (TFT) down, that is, and not in a shotgun kind of way. Jimmy met us in the yard, and I told him the whole story.

“...so, yeah,” I concluded. “Then the AAA guy said the spare was bad, and here we are.”

“Okay,” says Jimmy. “Come on in the office, let me get a phone number from you where you can be reached.”

Office. I love Jimmy. This so-called “office” is a desk and a telephone in the middle of a big pile of tires. With a roof over it. But how did he know I got myself a cell phone since the last time I was here? Didn't matter. I followed him in the so-called office and rattled off the number.

“AAA Guys lie,” he murmured as he wrote it down. “Didn’t want to say anything out there and embarrass him, but we see it all the time. They tell you that your spare’s bad because they don’t want to change it. Maybe ‘cause they hope to sell a new one. We’ll have a look, but we won’t replace it unless it’s really necessary.”

Jimmy is officially my Pretend Grampa.

He said it would be done in about an hour, and that he’d call me when it was. Said I’d be welcome to wait in the office, but I didn’t think that sounded like the most comfortable place to waste an hour on a beautiful morning. Besides, I was still bursting for that pee, and something told me Jimmy’s bathroom might not be the most sanitary place for me to have it.

While I was walking over to the Stop & Shop to use their bathroom, I decided to give Johnny a call and let him know what was going on. He was painting in My Lady’s house, remember, so he could also fill her in and put her mind at ease. Except for, hm, that’s odd. Johnny’s phone was trunking over as if he were still on the subway, underground.

That can’t be right.

I tried a few more times, then decided that he must have accidentally shut it off, and called My Lady.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Lady, it’s Erin. I—“

“Yeah!,” she interrupted. “What ever happened to Johnny?”

“He’s not there?”

“No. And,” she stammered over it, said it in the absolute nicest way possible, but still: “and I can’t, you know, sit around here all day waiting for him.”

Um, didn't you and I have plans? Weren’t we supposed to be reading the Bible in the cemetery right about now? Where, exactly, do you need to go? Also, Johnny has my key, he can let himself in, you don't need to wait for him. But most important, like you said: what happened to Johnny?

I told her just the part about him having a key. I apologized on his behalf, said I was sure he’d be there just as soon as he could. Said, maybe a little pointedly, that I hoped he was all right. Asked her to have him call me as soon as he turned up, then wished her a good weekend and rung off.

I’d be lying if I said the thought didn’t cross my mind perhaps he’d stopped off for a pint along the way. A little liquid Prozac after our harrowing ordeal might have been something an Irish doctor would order. I was beginning to crave a smackerel my ownself. But then I remembered that it was only 9:00 a.m. when he’d left me, and that he loves My Lady almost more than he loves me. (He always has been a sucker for the ould ones; I think he wants them all to be his Pretend Ma.) So I put that thought out of my mind and rang him up again.

And again.

And again.

I called his number repeatedly, hanging up and dialing again as soon as it trunked over to voice mail. (Somewhere in all of this, I made it to the bathroom. No, I did not dial from the pot.) Finally, as I was making my way back across Newport Ave., he picked up.

“Johnny!”

“Yeah. What?”

He was okay, and yes, still on the train. I didn’t get the whole story from him until later, but I’ll tell it to you now:

Turns out that the T station we could see from where I’d left him – JFK – is the only thing (or the only thing I’ve ever heard, at least) Johnny’s afraid of. He apparently was mugged there one time, years ago, ever since he won’t go in save at the pinnacle of a rush-hour commute. And according to his definition, 9:00 a.m. was not quite pinnacley enough, so he’d walked up to Andrew.

Andrew was closed, so he walked up to Broadway.

Where he sat.

And sat.

And sat.

Until the train came.

And then he sat some more.

So yes, he was physically all right, but emotionally he was a little bruised. It really did take him two and a half hours to travel – oh, what the heck, let’s get the exact distance from google maps, shall we? hang on... 4.1 miles.

By now I decided that I deserved a treat, so I walked up to 7-11, bought a liter of Diet Coke and a 99-cent-sized package of Baked Lay’s, and headed for the beach. I was still dressed for lunch with My Lady, but that did not preclude me from sitting on a bench in the seabreeze, sipping soda and snacking on processed potatoes while finally finishing that New Yorker article.

It was a lovely walk, the beach was gorgeous, and no sooner had I sat down on that aforementioned bench than I heard a trill, electronic warble.

“Hello?”

“Hi Erin, it’s Jimmy! Your car’s all set. Didn’t need a spare after all. Just cleaned the rust off the old one and it’s fine. Got a used tire on there for you, and you’re good to go.”

“Okay, great! I’m up at the beach, so I’ll be there in as long as it takes me to get back.”

“Oh there’s no hurry. It’s a beautiful day! Stay up the beach all afternoon for all I care. Heck, maybe I’ll come up and join you!”

Have I mentioned how much I love Jimmy's Tire?

But I didn’t stay. It was coming on noon and, since my loverly plans for my loverly day had been dastardlily dashed by Chuck (TFT), I’d taken a cue from My Loverly Lady and decided there was someplace else that I needed to be. And I needed to be there by 12:35.

So I walked back up to Jimmy’s Tire, paid a whopping total sum of $50 (have I mentioned?) and took myself to see Sex and the City. Bought myself a large Diet Coke with just a little bit of ice, and a large popcorn with no butter but whopping gobs of salt. Sat there licking my fingers and laughing to myself (and hating Mario Cantone, but that’s a whole other gossipy story), and pretended, for two and a half hours, that everything was going to be okay.

Never did finish that New Yorker article. Can anybody tell me how it ends? Do the computers really talk? And if so, when do I get my freaking jet pack?


P.S. The next day, Johnny and I did some early-bird grocery-shopping for the 4th of July, and a five-pound box of frozen hamburger patties slid under Chuck’s back seat. I found it yesterday. And it's been hot.

So now he smells like the fetid, rotten, dead thing that he has been all along.