Honey? Honey? Do we still have AAA?
Hmmm? What? Yes. Why?
Captain OCD has just woken me up to ask if we have AAA. We always have AAA. What time is it? It feels like I’ve been sleeping for only a couple of hours and in my sleep-deprived, newly woken haze I try to figure out what’s going on without committing to opening my eyes. He must have left for work, the truck broke down, and then he walked back home to call AAA. Wait a minute: This isn’t 1978. He has a cell phone and an AAA card in his wallet and so has no need to walk home to make a phone call. Given his propensity to wake me up to share his excitement about weather conditions in areas I’ve never heard of, though, that’s not too far outside the realm of possibility.
What happened?
The truck is in the pond.
Of course it is.
This is grounds for the opening of the eyes and a glance at the clock. It’s 6:15. I feel like I’ve been sleeping for only a couple of hours because I have been sleeping for only a couple of hours. It sort of occurs to me that the only way to get to the pond is through the pasture, which is, as pastures often are, surrounded by a fence. Which means the truck had to go through two fences and possibly a couple of llamas to reach the pond. I was still too groggy to articulate my thoughts, but he answered them anyway:
I have the llamas locked in the stall. I have a lot of fence to fix.
When he got out his AAA card, he noticed that it said it expired at the end of May, which is when he woke me up to ask if we still had AAA. That’s reasonable enough. We get so much promotional material from AAA that I throw it away at the post office without opening the envelopes, which is probably what I did with the renewal notice because I swear I just renewed it a couple of months ago. FYI: There is someone available at the AAA 800-number at 6:30 AM who will be happy to renew your membership.
I get up and look out the window:
What happened?
The truck was warming up, I came back in to take my vitamins and grab my coffee, and I heard chains rattling. I looked out the window to see the truck heading into the pasture.
What happened?
The vibrations and the weight of the Bobcat must have pushed the trailer over the wheel chock, the one I drive over every time I park the truck.
You’re able to drive over the wheel chock, and yet you expected it hold the truck in place?
It always does. Except, as we now know, when the truck is pointed the other way with the Bobcat on the trailer and hooked up to the truck. I probably shouldn’t do that again.
I renew the membership and head back to bed. He starts to call AAA to ask for a tow:
Do not tell them it’s in a pond. They don’t do offroad. [Don’t ask me how I know this.]
I won’t: It’s off the edge of the driveway.
Which was true.
We have a fan going in the bedroom all year long for white noise and I can’t sleep without it. So, what I didn’t know until later in the afternoon, because Captain OCD failed to mention this part of the story, is that the whole commotion was very loud, his sister and brother-in-law from next door got out of bed to come over to see what was going on, Captain OCD unhooked the trailer, unloaded the Bobcat, chained it up to the truck, and brother-in-law got in the truck to try to drive it out while Captain OCD pulled with the Bobcat. I’m guessing that was all quite noisy, but I heard none of it. His sister said she looked out their bedroom window to see the truck heading across the pasture, Captain OCD running fast out of the house, two llamas looking in all directions at once, and the dog trying to herd the whole mess into some semblance of order. Not until then did he come back in the house to wake me up about his AAA card.
While you can renew your AAA membership at 6:30 AM, a tow truck might not be dispatched until 8:00 AM. Which gives one an opportunity to mend fences in the interim.
