The F'ing Warranty
1) Never get a tattoo with your lover's name on it.
2) Never make movies with your lover.
3) Never wear your magnanimous "bling" that your lover got you to declare his undying 3-month love for you in promotional photos.
4) Keep your lover in your private life and your public/career stuff separate.
Generally, good rules. And while I try not to be a name-namer here, if I don't, I risk sounding like a weirdo. Let's just say I had an acquaintance in my former profession who included said lover in a piece of the career said acquaintance…and obviously, things didn’t work out. I shrug. Obviously someone wasn’t watching enough E!.
In other news, my father is turning 60 this week. And while I won’t wax poetic about coming-of-age and realizing my father’s mortality, I do have a funny story about his birthday/anniversary present.
My mother bought him a remote-control car-starter for his car. His job in the winter, for years because he leaves the house earlier than my mother, is that he turns on both cars and brushes the cars off. So, for him, having a remote starter was a pretty good gift (and he’s tickled to have it).
The problem is, is that my mother has to borrow the car so that she can take it into the electronics place to have it installed. Which means that she has to lie to my father and say that she needs it for hauling things (he drives a Honda Pilot)? She returns the truck the same day, but it’s still three or four days before their anniversary (which is a week before my father’s birthday, but this gift was still designated “birthday”).
One of the problems that results from the installation of the remote devices is that the “SRS” light goes off in the truck – indicating that the airbags won’t turn on. Originally, this is a safety feature so that the passenger won’t get crushed like a grape by the airbag in case of an accident in which said passenger isn’t wearing a seatbelt. But, the “SRS” light going on also happens when a heavy book or bag of groceries sits on the passenger seats, too. So, my father doesn’t take too much stock in that alone.
However, the 60,000 mile warranty on the truck is up. …And the “SRS” light is not the only thing happens to go wrong as a result of installing the remote device in the car.
My poor father. He knows that the warranty just turned over, and figures that the “SRS” light is just one of those things that needs to get fixed by the dealer. He goes out one of the colder and snowier mornings to turn on the car by hand (because at the time, he doesn’t know that the car has a remote starter). As he’s looking for the ignition, he swears to himself, “There’s gotta to be a light here…isn’t there?” He figures it might have something to do with the warranty, too, but shrugs it off reluctantly. Later that week, he’s driving to work and as he’s making a turn, hears a “shhhik, shhhik, shhhik” which is not the noise that the steering wheel usually makes. So he reaches down to feel what’s going on…and the cover on the steering column pops off. It’s got to be the fucking warranty! he curses and jams the steering column cover back on.
Come the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and my parents and I are celebrating their anniversary. My father bought my mother a lovely necklace, and it’s his turn to open his gift. …Mind you, I know that my mother bought him a remote-control car-starter.
He opens it up and sees two remote keys on a carabineer. The look on his face was priceless…something between a look of concern, discomfort, and disbelief. He picks up the remote, and does the first thing that any man would do in his situation: he pushes the button.
“You just started the car,” I said.
“I what?”
“You just started the car,” my mother insists.
“I don’t believe it,” he says, and stands up, looking out the back window at the car. Once he gets his shoes on, heads outside, and sees that yes, he did start his car with the remote controls.
When he gets back inside, he’s still dubious, “When did that happen?”
“When I said I was hauling that load [for a charity],” my mother replies blithely. “You don’t know how hard it was to lie to you when you said all that stuff was going wrong in the car.
Suddenly, he looks relieved. He then tells me everything that had gone wrong with the car in one week. “I thought it was the damn warranty! I figured that there was no way that all that shit could happen in one week after the warranty rolled over and not be related!”
My poor dad. He’s tickled pink with his new toy though; he has no idea how he lived without it.
