This isn't the first time the hag has left me hanging, but if she knows what's good for her (a continued garage over her pretty little Mercedes head), it better be her last.
It happened on my way home one evening late last week, after yet another humiliating loss at the hands of a guy I play tennis with regularly. We have a rather parasitic tennis relationship — we both love to play singles, he loves to win, and I apparently love to provide him with those wins by throwing away match after match with my psychotic version of the game.
I am the Salieri to his Mozart-like genius — my moments of brilliance are followed by set after set of mediocrity.
I was only about two miles from my house when "Christine," shall we call her, decided to extend my misery.
I'd already had about 20 minutes to stew over my latest on-court meltdown and had resolved I wasn't going to go home with an attitude, when Christine decided she had other plans, and up and died.
Yep, right there in the left-turn lane headed north on Old Statesville Road trying to get onto Sam Furr Road. As if the construction hassle, shifting lanes and orange barrels there weren't bad enough, guess how popular that made me during Thursday night rush hour.
It was a dainty demise, I'll give her that. I didn't even realize anything had happened until the traffic light changed and I gently stepped on the gas pedal (you gotta be careful with a V-8) just to see that she'd given up the ghost. Music still playing, all the electronics apparently in good shape, but suddenly none of that oomph I usually get from the 300-plus ponies under the hood.
Just like my tennis game — all form and no substance.
I immediately slapped on the hazard lights and tried to get her to turn over, but no luck. Just the sound of an engine struggling to engage, which I found if you listen closely, sounds remarkably similar to a jealous woman's cackle.
Frantically trying to describe my situation to my trusty roadside assistance service (thank the heavens for USAA), the noise of the laboring engine was overcome only by the honking of the idiot behind me. Apparently, the dingbat in the mammoth white suburban assault vehicle on my tail thought the hazard lights meant I just couldn't make up my mind whether I wanted to turn left or right.
Game on, cupcake.
Swinging open the driver's side door, I unfolded myself out of the low-slung roadster to address the issue of my immobility with the dim bulb behind me. Cell phone to one ear, I approached her wondering quite loudly why she doesn't think I would be turning if I could.
Must've been something in my stride. She suddenly decided it was a good idea to grin like a simpleton, wave frantically as if to say "My bad," and go around me. Good call. Probably the smartest thing she'd done all day, and might have saved her own life.
My interaction with male motorists that evening was far different. In the span of less than 10 minutes — the time it took me to call my husband and for him to come to my rescue in my truck (yeah, that's right, I said truck; we both have our mid-life crisis wheels) — no less than four men had stopped to find out if I was okay or if they could help.
The same went for my husband as he sat and waited for the tow truck to arrive. A couple of guys asked if he needed anything, but one woman pulled right up on him to the point that she couldn't even get around him once she realized that, no, really, Christine was not moving.
Sheesh, women.
