I was enjoying a leisurely drive home from work on Monday when I thought someone started honking at me. I was just merging on the freeway, I took a glance around but didn’t see anyone near me. Then the honking happened again. I thought someone must have really been in blind spot because I still didn’t see anyone. Suddenly a car went racing by me, laying on the horn. I was pretty sure I didn’t cut them off, so I just chalked it up to them being rude and/or crazy. Down the road I started hearing it again, then I realized it was me!! My horn was malfunctioning and going on and off by itself. Soon it became mostly on. There was a little bit of traffic and I was trying to hang back so I could drive alone, but that backfired and I ended up the first car at a stoplight, honking at everyone who drove through the intersection. I didn’t want to drive another 20 minutes to my dealership, so I went to the Ford dealership by my house. I thought getting out of my constant horn honking car (think old rickety Mustang on the Road to Hana… it even started sounding a bit “horse”) would relieve a bit of stress, but the stressful night was just beginning.
I stood in the Ford service area for 30 minutes before getting to talk to anyone. I don’t know what the hell takes so long at that place, but I was second in line and there were two service managers on duty. Anyway, the guy takes one look at my car and says he can’t fix it because he doesn’t have an electrical manual for it. I just said screw it and told him to disconnect it. I can’t be driving about town honking like a jackass. I get checked in, grab my phone which is about dead and give Nick a call to come pick me up.
The first words out of his mouth were “I can’t pick you up because the truck is at Ford.” Apparently he was upset that I left for work in the morning without helping him drop it off (in my defense, I forgot). Of course he probably deserved me forgetting about it because he had the audacity to ask me to drive it to my work to have Dave look at why the window wouldn’t go up. Let me state that again. Nick wanted me to drive the truck 20 miles, in 10 degree weather, with a window that was stuck down. Also in my defense, we never set up a game plan of getting the truck to Ford. I told him I wasn’t driving it anywhere, and that was the end of the conversation.
So after proceeding to tell me that he had no way to pick me up I hear Big 6 in the background. He’s got 4 friends over… and he has no way of picking me up? WTF? Did they all walk over? Get dropped off, perhaps? And his concern was that if we’re both home we’d have no way to pick up the vehicles later that night. As if everyone wasn’t going to be at our house until 1:00 am. I told him I wasn’t about to sit at Ford all night and someone had better come pick me up.
And of course when he gets there he asks, why didn’t I just bring the car to my dealer? Especially since Ford can’t fix it anyway. In retrospect that sounds like a fantastic idea. Had I known I’d have to wait for a half hour and then pay $60 to have it disconnected, I probably would have kept on driving. But I think people underestimate what a stressful situation a broken horn is. I’m sure you’re reading this right now thinking, “yeah, that would suck.” Let me tell you… you don’t know.
So, what are the odds that both our vehicles end up in the repair shop on the same day?
10,000,000 to 1