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Date Night Disappointment

Date Night.  I remember when this used to be a treasured term.  It was a night when John and I would get all gussied up, hire a babysitter, and throw away the cares of the world for a few blissful hours.

Date night is a fairly regular thing now.  Two things have made a difference:  the kids are all grown up, and we have more money ;-)  In fact, date night regularly includes the girls.  I guess we should just call it "family night" now.  If John and I do actually go out alone, it's only because the girls are too busy to join us.  Yep, that's what happens when you realize you only have a few more years with kids living under your roof--you want to spend every minute you can with them.

It happened to be one of those nights when both of the girls were busy, so John and I headed out to Texas Roadhouse.  Talking to friends who happen to be in the same life stage as us, I find that a lot of us end up eating out.  I guess after spending years of cooking meals for the masses, it feels like too much effort to cook for two at home!

As we got into Greenie, I noticed that I had a vehicle message:  the air pressure in one of my tires is low.  Gosh darn it, I hate getting that message because that usually means, that in all the miles I drive, my tire has found a nail, and the air is slowly leaking out.

No worries.  John said we could drop by Sheetz (our local gas stop) after dinner and fill up the tire.

What was supposed to be a five minute stop turned into a 90 minute experience.

As John was filling up the tire, the deelie-ma-bob that attaches to the air hose broke off the tire.  In fact, I had two that fell off, but John only tried to continue to fill the low tire.  Bad plan.

As I was sitting in the car, waiting, I heard the "sssssshhhhhh" of leaking air (from inside the closed car) and could literally feel the car sinking on the one side.  I got out and saw this:


Wow!  Nothing like trying to fill up the tire, eh?

John broke out the Volvo tire repair kit, complete with gloves, a plastic bag for the tire, a tire iron, a jack and the spare.  He absolutely refused to wear the gloves (saying that no self-respecting man would put those on), and the story of the plastic bag comes later.

Well, as high quality as Volvo is (even including a pair of gloves in their tire repair kit), the tire iron that was supplied is NOT.  In fact, it only took John using his foot on it once before he completely bent.  Let's just say that tools might have gone flying into the nearby pile of mulch in frustration.

At this point, John could easily have walked in either direction to find the proper tools he needed--Walmart was 100 yards away, as was our home teacher's home (in the opposite direction). However, I remembered that we have AAA.  In fact, we pay our dues each year just for situations like this (and for discounts at hotels and UPS).  I told John that he was going to have the luxury of sitting back and letting someone else do the car repairs for once.  After all, how many times do we ourselves have the luxury of uninterrupted conversation?  Never.

We made the call.

Oh my goodness.  It was like keeping a race horse tied back at the starting line.  John was about to crawl out of his skin, waiting for the AAA guy to come.  In fact, after 45 minutes, he was on the phone, chewing out the lady at the call center.  It was not a pretty site.  So much for uninterrupted conversation, eh?

Probably the worst part of the whole thing had nothing to do with us or our situation.

Did you know that pretty much every person in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania chooses to fill up the air in their tires at 6:00 p.m. at that very Sheetz?  You can imagine the looks we received, sitting pretty in our car, directly in front of the pump, making it almost impossible for anyone else to reach it.  Yep, I had done my best to save John any inconvenience by pulling as close to the pump as possible in the beginning.  I believe the only thing that kept John from crawling out of his skin was being able to get out of the car every five minutes and spend five minutes explaining our situation to the person....until the next person pulled up.

Finally, the AAA guy pulled up, and he had our tire fixed in mere minutes.  When I pulled out the plastic bag and the gloves (to use to put away the tire), John refused to use them.  For him, they simply weren't "man" enough.

Date night....Kennedy style.

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