Unless you are a fan of the Doctor Demento Show you have probably never heard a song that says, “Rental cars are really great/driving over speed bumps at a hundred and eight…/you can crash it/you can smash it/’cause it’s only a rental car.” We had to rent a car since all we ever do is drive, and try to do it without a credit card or worse yet, with cold, hard cash! There is a place in town here that will do it, called AA Auto Rental. Very nice people to do business with and they took the debit card with no problem. The problem came in because I had asked for the cheapest car they had.
This would be a 2001 Suzuki Swift. Well, let me tell you one thing I have discovered. The Suzuki Swift might be very good on gas and have nice, comfortable seats, but there is one thing it lacks. It is not a family car. Try fitting 3 adults and 2 teenagers in one. The only thing worse than getting everybody in is getting them out. It looks like the circus where all the clowns get out of the little car.
So, we set out for church. Grandma’s new walker, the one I call the “Hugo Hotrod” will not fit by any stretch, so she has to use the old one that has the worn-out tennis balls on the bottom so it makes a lovely screeching sound on the tile. She has to sit up front. We get to church and it is going to be an awards ceremony for our Christian school. That’s nice. Until someone comes out with a dozen roses and there are flowers, roses, all over the church.
“Why, that must have smelled beautiful!” you say. Oh sure, that may be true enough, except for one small detail. Margaret is deathly allergic to them. She has always been allergic to roses, but the last several years her asthma has gotten worse and she goes into a killer asthma attack. ‘Tis the season for allergy related asthma and she has had two attacks already this week, one involved calling an ambulance. Thus, here I am at home, waiting to see what happens next, although the way it stands now, the inhaler is working just fine.
Some people use perfumes and sprays and don’t really think that there is a possibility that someone may not appreciate the gallon-and-a-half of perfume they wear because they are too lazy to bathe…oops. Did I say that? What I meant was that, er, while you may have a nice smelling perfume, aftershave, cologne remember, a lot of times little is much. Just because you can’t smell it a mile away doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t. Remember, perfumes and colognes are actually meant to be a little more intimate, to draw another person closer, and do not need to be smelled from a half mile away. Actually, besides triggering people’s allergies you can, in fact, make people want to stay a little more than a half a mile away.
Every guy in the country, possibly the world, is suddenly going, in guy-like delayed reaction style, “Whoa! Wait a minute! What do you mean your wife is allergic to roses? What do you do when there’s a special occasion, like an anniversary or birthday or forgotten anniversary or forgotten birthday?” Well, fellers, I save a bundle of money, just like in the car insurance commercial.
Gals, if you think I sound unromantic you will just have to talk to Margaret and see if she thinks I am.
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It appears that the inhaler has worked.
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