Chuckie's Pants

Well, it's only Wednesday, and already it's been quite a week. My husband had to leave on Sunday, for a week on business, and took the car. This left me with the truck, our second vehicle, which runs ok, most of the time, but is sometimes a little unreliable, due to it's age. Monday morning greeted me with cold, cold, rain, but since the kids didn't have school, I snuggled back down into the covers, and waited for my best friend of *muffled number* years to call, and confirm plans to meet at her house, about an hour away.
Finally I got up, and got the kids ready, and when the phone call came, we were on our way, despite the weather. At the last minute, however, I decided to be "comfortable", and I called my friend, and told her I was coming in my pajamas. "Not just any pj's", I told her, "these are bright red sleep pants with large black flames on them, that used to belong to chuckie. (Chuckie DeeWayne is my ex brother in law) Now they belong to Tommy (my absent husband), and since he is gone, I think I'm going to borrow them, because they are sooooo comfortable. After all I'm not getting out anywhere...(Just for the record, don't ever say that, it's like tempting fate).

"That's fine, she said, I think I will be wearing my footy pjs, when you get here." This could be fun, I thought, and promptly told the kids about our "pajama party", and had them dress up accordingly. My thirteen year old, the only one with any sense, declined to wear pajamas.
I had a nagging misgiving, right before I left, as I spied myself in the mirror. I knew better than to leave the house in your night clothes. My mother had taken us to school one time in her nightgown, and run out of gas in the ghetto, and in the days before cell phones, there was nothing to do but get out and walk to the nearest gas station. This was a story we had never let her live down, and I have to admit that it crossed my mind, as I walked out the door.
On the way out my fifteen year old, who was mad because I wouldn't let her have company while I was gone, said to me "I hope you run out of gas, and have to walk somewhere in those pants!" I laughed it off and drove away.


So we set off, my children and I in our sleepwear, with my aunt in the passenger seat wearing a large blue terry cloth robe. I had my short hair in a really tight ponytail on top of my head. I had no makeup, and an old worn out long underwear shirt to top everything off. All this, coupled with my Tommy Hilfiger shoes below, made me a sight to see. A really pretty picture.
The truck was running fine, and I began to relax, and converse with my aunt, as we drove along, about the sermon I had heard in church last week. I was in mid sentence, when I realized that I had no power steering. It only took a millisecond later for me to realize that I also had no power brakes. I pulled off to the side of the highway, and sat there for a minute, in the silence. Then I tried to start the truck, again, hoping against hope that it would start, and everything would be ok. Nothing. I tried for forty five minutes to start that darn truck, until the engine started to sound low. It came to me, with horror, as I sat there in the truck, fruitlessly trying to crank the engine, that I was going to have to exit the safety of my vehicle, and enter the world, dressed in those flame red pants. chuckie's pants.
The sheriff came, I stayed inside the vehicle. He called a tow truck for me, and the moment came for me to get out, on the side of the highway, and walk down the street, to the nearest gas station, actually, a little liquor store, called Three Brother's Pizza. We made quite a picture, as we ran down the highway in the rain, Me in Chuckie's flame red pants, my daughter in her prettiest pink pajamas, and my aunt in her terrycloth robe. My son, as I said, was the only one with any sense.
When I got inside, I called my father in law, and asked him if he could come get the kids, and my aunt, and take them home. I had to go with the tow truck driver to the fix it place I had called. (The clerk at the Three Brother's Pizza, was the nicest man, he let me use his phone book to call places, paper and pen to write with, and even gave my little girl a free piece of pizza, and he didn't even say a word about the pajamas.)
The tow truck driver and I got to the fix it place, where I was ushered into a back room office at a paint and body shop. And that's where I sat, all day long, while the owner of the shop worked on my truck. After about two hours, I thought I was going to go crazy. You know the room. The grout is broken in the tiled floors, the walls are scuffed, and there are car posters and clipboards on the wall. There is a clock on the wall that has cars in all the number spots, and the engines rev on the hour. (The first time I heard the clock, I almost jumped out of my pants, if you will excuse the pathetic pun. Out of the total silence, all of a sudden engines started revving, and it took me a minute to figure it out.)
Everywhere there is dust, and dirt, and the unmistakable aroma of Bondo, and in the background is the hum of the air compressor, as it goes off and on intermittently. (OK, I had a lot of time to think about this blog)
There is no real color in the room, the brightest thing in there is... well...chuckie's pants.
I kept catching glimpses of myself in the glass, and I just couldn't believe that I had actually gone out of my house WEARING these things. WHAT was I thinking? What were the people working in the shop thinking, as I sat there all day, in those clothes. It was so quiet in there. Every once in a while I would hear a pair of shoes come shuffling by. A couple of times the owner would come in and I would start to rise, thinking we were almost done, but it was always someone else, whose work was done.
Finally after four mind numbing hours, he came in and said he couldn't work on it any more, because it was too cold. His hands were numb. I had to call my father in law AGAIN, and ask him to drive all the way out to get me. There was one good thing about it, though, as he set off to find the place. I told him "you can't miss me, even in the dark. I'm wearing bright red pants with big black flames."

To end the story, the truck is still not fixed. The owner of the body shop got it running, and actually drove it to my house. They got five blocks away, and it died again. They had to tow it the rest of the way to my house. When they were almost in the driveway, he cranked it, and it started again.
This morning I got up and drove it to the shop down the street. I'm taking no chances with that truck.
Several things I learned from this experience.
1. The Obvious: NEVER wear your pj's in public
2. The outside world is cold. I take for granted my heated house, my heated car, my heated water. It takes being out in it for a while for superficial thankfulness to become deep gratitude. The office I sat in all day was unheated and cold. All I could thing about was getting home and taking a hot shower. Many don't have that. I am deeply, deeply grateful that I do.
3. People are nice. Everybody, from the sheriff who came out, to the clerk at the pizza store, to the tow truck operator, to the shop owner, who came out at three pm on Martin Luther King day, and worked all day on my truck, and then delivered it to me the next day, were so nice. And my father in law drove 160 miles that day to help get us home, and then loaned us his extra vehicle until ours is fixed. I owe him a a BIG thanks. Ok, I know not EVERYBODY is nice, but this time I was amazed at how helpful people were. They could have taken one look at me and assumed I was less than classy but nobody said a word, although some mouths might have twitched.
*Disclaimer* If you know Chuckie, no offense intended. I barely knew him myself, this is only about the pants.