The last few blog posts here have been some pretty heavy stuff. Today is a day we need something to laugh about. Your news feed, and TV's are going to be full of people arguing about gun control, lack of mental health resources, accountability of the schools and parents, and just overall sadness. I think all of those things are important, and my wheels are already spinning about collaborating with my educator friends on a post related to these topics. But when it's the day after such a horrendous event, I also just think we need a moment to breathe. And be sad. And maybe, find something to let our brains forget, and take a moment to laugh. That's my unprofessional mental health advice for you today. Lucky for you, I am all about letting people laugh at my expense. So I have a good one for you.
Disclaimer: My husband is one of the most responsible people I know. He always follows protocol on safety things and this story is not a reflection on his overall life choices.
A few weeks ago it was "that time of the year" where I needed to go through all the receipts of 2017 and get them organized for taxes. When I got to a Slumberland receipt, I actually stopped and said out-loud to Ben in the next room, "What did we buy at.........oh wait". Then I took the receipt to Ben laughing saying, "I ALMOST forgot that last March we had to buy a whole new section to the couch!" And that's when I found out Ben still isn't ready to laugh that much about this story. Maybe next year. Give it time. I bet you will though.
Last year we had been hunting for a leather sectional to complete our family room. Ben happened upon one on Craig's List one evening. It looked exactly like the one we had been eyeing at the furniture store, but for half the price. It was for sale in a city about 45 minutes from us and Ben wanted to go look at it, and possibly purchase it one night after work.
This is the part where I have to give you some background information and explain to you that when it comes to vehicles some would consider us.....frugal? Lame? Ridiculous? Somewhere in between those words is our life related to the vehicles we drive. Ben still drives his single cab truck he has driven since high school. I think it's kinda cute that we still drive the truck he picked me up for in dates 16 years ago. We also have three kids and still shove them all in the back seat of a car (3 boosters in the back of the car). We were going to be responsible parents and upgrade a few years ago to a suburban or something cool, but then we thought a pontoon would make way more sense for the 12 weeks out of the year that we have summer. Driving nice vehicles is just not something that excites us and we have done a pretty good job of postponing the purchase of a decent vehicle. Moving on.
Ben needed to pull the trailer with his pick up, and I would follow in the car with the kids. Because I wanted to be there and give the okay on a couch that would be in my house. And this is why we were driving separately on a crappy, dark, rainy March evening. We see the couch, and it's a steal of a deal. It's in great condition and from a nice home. We got the feeling he was maybe going through something with his wife because while I was there he also tried to sell me lots of other things that I am not quite sure were his to sell. I said no to buying the puppy and the bar stools and the artwork, but he was very nice and helped Ben load up the couch. We had a tarp covering the couch, and strapped it all down.
As we venture home onto the interstate I can see that the wind is whipping the tarp around, and the rain is causing it to slip out from under the straps. I was worried that the tarp was going to fly off and cause an accident by landing on someones windshield. I called Ben, he pulled over, and together we re-strapped things down in the rain. We start driving again, but the same thing happened. We pulled over a total of three times. On the fourth time, it was REALLY raining, cars were whizzing by us, we were feeling really frustrated and Ben had finally had enough. Out of frustration, he said something I don't want to type here, but in translation I think what he meant to say was, "Forget this, I am just going to haul my butt home, it will be fine". Famous last words my friends.
So Ben takes off, ahead of me. As in, he has already driven away while I was still shutting my car door. So he was quite a ways ahead of me. And there I was, just driving home on a dark rainy night, with my three kids fighting like banshees chatting sweetly in the backseat. I got off of the interstate and onto a highway. I was in between two towns and it was so dark. No moon, just rain, and darkness. All of the sudden out of nowhere, BAM. I felt my car hit something SO HARD. The BAM was so loud, it silenced the little banshees in the backseat and I quickly pulled over. I was convinced I had hit a deer, or even a cow or something. I was shaking and just over all freaking out that I had just wrecked the front end of my already not nice car. We were all fine, but I was so nervous to get out and look at the car. Before I got out of the car, I called Ben. And this friends, is how that phone conversation went:
Ben: Hello?
Me: I just HIT something REALLY hard and I don't know what it was, but I am pulled over and I think I wrecked the car and I have no idea what I just hit what do I do?!
Ben: (long pause..........................................)Well....it wasn't the couch was it?
ME: (I had NOT even considered this thought, as he had been so far ahead of me by now) WHAT DO YOU MEAN WAS IT THE COUCH?!!?!??! WOULDN'T YOU KNOW IF YOU HAD LOST THE COUCH?!!?!?!? ARE YOU EVEN KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?
Ben: Well...I mean..I guess yeah..but I don't know..its SO DARK back there....I may have felt something..but ..maybe not...
This friends, is where I legitimately start freaking out. I am now worried that our just purchased couch that is probably worth more than our vehicles (as I explained) is in the middle of highway 10 and is about to cause a major accident. Thoughts of wrongful whatever lawsuits are flying through my head as I whip the car around and start driving to check on what it is that I hit. Meanwhile, in the backseat, the two year old is repeating over and over "what happened what happened what happened" and the six year old is literally praying out loud, saying, "Dear Jesus, help mom and dad to find our new couch and not be mad"as I am flying down the highway in a tizzy.
And lo and behold, there was the middle "L" section of the couch, in all its wet, exploded, stuffing-everywhere-glory, lying in the middle of hwy 10. I hopped out of the car and lugged it off of the middle of the hwy onto the side of the road. Not long after, Ben came to the scene of the incident. We stood there together, in the rain, not even saying anything for a minute, but just staring at what was left of the couch. Finally Ben just picked it up and threw it back onto the trailer, and this time, I followed him a bit more carefully home.
When we got home that evening, nobody spoke a word to each-other. Imagine taking a thousand dollars cash, and then lighting it on fire. We had that kind of feeling. We felt really, really, stupid.
Nobody spoke until child number two, said, "Gosh that was a fun night, I love when we get to eat at Costco".
To wrap this up. Ben called Slumberland furniture the next day (where the couch was originally from) and explained that we needed to purchase some replacement sections. The nice salesman was adamant that the one we had was under warranty and if we could just "explain what was wrong or defective with the sections we wanted replaced" he could give us a new one. Ben had no energy to explain that his wife hit the section with her car, and I don't think that would have been under their warranty terms anyways.
I shared a snippet of this on Facebook the night it happened. To that, my brother asked me why I love sharing with the public how dumb I am sometimes. We have a very loving, honest relationship like that. And a speaker friend of mine commented that if I could only find some "theological tie in" with this story, it would make for great speaking material. It has been a year now, and I have no great life lessons garnered from this story yet or theological "tie in". It's just a really ridiculous story, about a STUPID incident, that hopefully brought you a chuckle today. And on this depressing day in America, that I guess, would qualify as great material.
Labels: Stories to Laugh at
