the night i realized i was not titus mischke…

Last night I found myself trying to lift up my friend’s car. In this moment of absurdity my mind groped towards reality and asking the rational query, “why would you think this was an option?”

The answer brought me bach to the VPC   church parking lot in Southern California.  A sign that set aside that car space for some esteemed individual had been knocked down by the wind, and so I had parked in front of this sign laying on the concrete ground. Later, having forgotten about the breeze-slain guidepost and having the opposing parking space open, I decided to drive forward instead of my usual reversal from that spot. I quickly stopped however upon hearing from the bottom of my car a sound which one may have concluded that the vehicle was being ripped in half. It was not. I had driven over the sign. I could not reverse or go forward without the sound of competing metals scrapping each other. And there was no way of pulling the sign from under the car, it was tightly wedged.

This is where my buddy Titus comes in. I think most men would have thought to get a jack, raise the car, pull out the sign, un-jack the car, and drive off. But not him. No no no, he had me put my car in reverse while he lifted my car, with his hands, and walked with me as a drove out of the snare of that metal poster. Easy-peasy.

I seemed to have saved this memory for ‘such a time as this’ as I found myself in Amy’s car  last night.  Having unsuccessfully tried to tell her that she was about to drive off the sidewalk surrounding the parking lot, the front of the car was on Burnside, the rest on the sidewalk. It was time for me to think on my feet! First I had her put the car in neutral and tried to push it back into the parking lot. No luck. So I got out of the car, told Amy to reverse and started to lift the car off the ground. I got it off the ground about a quarter-inch before Amy turned the engine off. Because what was happening was ridiculous.

Then I realized  we should do what any other normal human being would have thought of in this situation, even Titus: Drive the rest of the car off the sidewalk since the street was where we were going anyway. “Genius” or “hero” might be running through your mind right now. But I’m just a normal lady living in a way  that at times is just purely unbelievable.