A "Happy Halloween" Fiasco

The light is green, people, go! She thought, baffled by the lack of rushing during this cold, misty rush hour. Green arrow, green arrow, come on, go faster, I’m going to miss the – great! So much for making the arrow. With a sigh, she rolled to a stop in the intersection and stared blankly at the cars on the opposite side that were, unbelievably, not proceeding through the intersection.

I could have gone. They’re not even moving! Shaking her head, she resigned herself to simply not being home in time to hand out candy to the first of the trick-or-treaters. Well, maybe I should have been more forthright in wanting to meet my neighbors instead of luring them into friendship with candy for their children…

The last of the pokey cars in the oncoming traffic bumbled by, just shy of stopping in the middle of the intersection, and she carefully pulled around the back of the car to execute the left-turn that would line her up with the highway entrance. On my way, at –

THUMP! ROOOARING SCRAAAAAAAAAAAPE!

Ah! What is that?! That’s my car! My car is making a very bad noise! Something fell off of it. Oh gosh. Lord, please don’t let it blow up! Ok, pull over, where can I pull over? There! Perfect! All of this noise erupted both outside the car and inside her mind within no more than half a second, and she probably hadn’t moved more than ten yards down the street before making it to the curb.

The misty drizzle grew thicker.

Flashers on – my gosh that sound is horrible! Engine off – no more sound. Lock the doors. No. I have to see what fell off. Unlock the doors. Boy this neighborhood looks sketchy. Maybe it’s not sketchy. Ok, no traffic, open the door.

She stepped into the road and quickly moved to the back of her car. No sense in being run over by her own car should someone somehow miss the flashers flashing in the misty, depressing dusk and rear end the parked vehicle while she was peering underneath it from the front. Better to hope someone would see her on the ground and simply not hit anything.

She squatted behind the car and hung her head sideways. Oh… My… The long pipe thing that she was pretty sure was her muffler was lying on the ground at the front end where it should have been connected to the engine or at least something near the engine. This is not good…

She stood and quickly slipped back into the driver’s seat, locking the doors before the door had closed beside her.

Phone. Where’s my phone? I have to call Dave. He should be leaving work soon, he’ll go right by here, he could pass by and leave me here if he misses my call – oh please don’t miss my call! She listened to the phone ringing, two rings, three, four – voicemail. She hung up and dialed again. Ring, etcetera, voicemail.

Argh! You have a brand new shiny phone that works perfectly why aren’t you answering now that I need you to answer more than I typically need you to answer?! She was just calm enough to notice how odd it was that she was not actually screaming this at the glowing device in her hand.

She slid the phone open to text her beloved the following: “I need you to call me NOW.” Three seconds passed. She dialed again. Voicemail. “Oh, come on!” She yelled audibly. She texted again: “Muffler fell off. Stranded.” Incomplete sentences are good for sparking alarm in someone, right?

It suddenly occurred to her that she should consider what to do about the car, not just worry about how to get a ride home. Will I get a ticket if I leave it here over night? The nearest parking sign was too far away to see, and now that it was raining in earnest and getting darker, she didn’t really want to go see what  permissions it would grant or deny.

She dialed her father. Somehow in the near year she had lived away from home she still had not accepted that he might not be able to fix any of her car troubles from three states away.

“Yello,” he answered.

“Hi. My muffler fell off.”

“That would make a loud noise.”

“Yeah, even worse than normal believe it or not, and a loud scraping noise. It fell off at the front end. Dave isn’t answering and I don’t know when he’s getting off work. Would AAA tow me to a shop or something? Does that cost extra or is it part of the membership?”

“At the front end?”

“Yes. Should I call AAA?”

“Are you dressed nice?”

“What?”

“Are you dressed nice?”

“Am I dressed nice?” What in the world does that have to do with anything? “What do you – I’m wearing jeans. Jeans and a sweatshirt. Why?”

“Well, you could crawl under the car at the back end of the car and see if there’s anything there that you can disconnect so that the other end comes off too.”

… Disconnect the… What? Isn’t the point to figure out how to get the broken part back on the car, not break it more? “You want me to take the whole muffler off of my car?”

“It’s an option.”

“And do what? Leave it in the road and drive home?” This sounds ludicrous! You can’t just leave large car parts in parking spaces on the side of the road! Can you?

“Yeah. Or see how long AAA would be. They might take an hour to get to you. They can tow you anywhere in 50 miles, or maybe 100 if you have a plus on your card. Do you have the plus on your card? You can tell them what garage you want to go to, do you know a garage you can take it to? Is there a place like where we go here, that uh, uh…What’s it called…” The sound of something being shuffled around in the background began, mingled with “uh…”

“I have a plus on my card. I’m not that far from home anyway”

“Ok, then they can take you pretty much wherever you want in town. Do you have a place you take your cars like that place we go here? What’s that called…”

“Tuned Up?”

“Yeah, do you have that? Or some kind of muffler place?”

“I’ve never seen a Tuned Up here. There’s a muffler place where we get our oil changed called Miles’.”

“Or that mechanic where Mom took our car when she was there. They seemed good.”

“I don’t remember the name of that… It starts with an H… Uh…” I am so much like my father! “Are you near a computer? It’s on Harlem. It starts with an H. It’s near Cheyenne and Duke.” A few minutes later he had located the mechanic’s shop that began with an H and given her the phone number and address for both places.

“A muffler place might give you a better deal. A mechanic would probably have to order parts and have them brought in from somewhere, but a muffler place might have whatever they need already to just put it back together.”

After all the effort to remember and find the place with the H we’re just throwing it out? Alright. “Ok well I need to find out if they’ll take the car anyway, and call AAA.”

“Ok. See ya.”

“Bye. Thanks!”

After a call to the muffler place and AAA she finally heard from Dave who, after going in circles together about different options for a few minutes, decided to finish his work and then pick her up in about forty-five minutes. That would be just before the tow truck should arrive, too. In the meantime she called the friend she’d been visiting to find out if she would mind picking her up and taking her somewhere warm to sit and wait.

While she waited for her friend she noticed just how thoroughly soaked the rug under her pedals was thanks to the small leak in her car’s roof. For the next ten minutes she watched the windows become foggier, the sky grow darker, tried to warm her fingers, and listened to the repeating squiiiiiisssshhhhh of water as she rocked her left foot back and forth on top of the sopping rug. Eventually, she recalled the stack of books next to her on the seat that she had borrowed from her friend’s impressive stash, so she picked up the first one and began reading. The Zookeeper’s Wife. Interesting title. She was quickly engrossed, but didn’t make it far before her friend pulled up and she climbed into her nicer, dryer, warmer vehicle.

“Here, let’s turn on the seat warmer for you,” her friend, Grace, said as she slid gratefully into the passenger seat.

Seat warmer?! She thought blissfully. They chatted until the tow truck showed up and the man looked under car then declared, “Ouch.”

“Yeah…” She agreed. Handing over her keys, he clarified where the car would be taken to and asked if her friend wouldn’t mind letting him take her parking spot just in front of the incapacitated vehicle, perfect for loading the car without his having to block traffic.

“That’s why we picked it!” Grace smiled.

Oh, really? She wondered, impressed by her friend’s forethought. She would have considered the parking arrangement a lucky coincidence. She and Grace slid back into the seat warmer equipped vehicle and she said, “I’ll call Dave to let him know the tow truck is here so he can come get me.”

“Oh no, I’ll just take you home.”

“But he has my keys,” she said, her thumb pointing over her shoulder to where the tow truck man was waiting for their parking spot.

“You don’t give them all your keys, just your car key.”

“Well my house key is the only other one on that ring.”

“You don’t give away your house key.”

“Right… That makes sense…” Idiot! She chided herself. How is that you are so blonde sometimes even though you convince people you’re smart? Good thing there are real adults around to rescue you.

After retrieving her house key from the tow trunk man she got back in the car, thanked Grace, and accepted the ride home.

“I’d been trying to decide if I should pass out candy and try to meet my neighbors tonight or go to the campus Bible study, and I finally decided to do half of both, but now it looks like I won’t get to do either.”

“I think you already missed the trick-or-treating. It ends in five minutes,” Grace nodded to the clock.

“So much for needing to decide.” She consented. “Maybe I'll go reverse trick-or-treating tomorrow and go door to door handing out candy and introducing myself as the girl who missed Halloween because her muffler fell off.”

After arriving home and thanking Grace one more time, she went inside and stared at all the candy sitting in her salad bowl. That’s ironic… She thought.

A total of three families of trick-or-treaters came to the door and gladly accepted the handfuls of candy she doled out.

She did not meet a single neighbor, but it was certainly a more eventful Halloween than she had anticipated.

The above story was inspired by entirely true events. Names and places have been changed. This is also a rather rough draft and would be trimmed down quite a bit if I ever tried to publish it. Hope you enjoyed!