I’ve spent a few days last week trying to find a mobile car mechanic to fix a broken fan belt in my Mother’s car. I was given the task because the car couldn’t be towed to her workplace and she isn’t fond of car mechanics. I assumed finding one would be easy and would only require a phone call.
The first one I contacted had moved to Albany, the second had a car accident, the third was busy watching a movie, the fourth said he’d be there at a set time and never arrived or called. Frustrated, I told my mother that she should just buy a new car and sell this one to the Autobots so they can save the human race. She wasn’t amused by the Transformers joke, nor did she like this idea of a new car and preferred the fan belt to be fixed.
After receiving numerous rejections from various mobile car mechanics, I was quite shocked to finally find one that was happy to exchange money for services rendered. I booked a date and time, then relayed the information to my Mother, making another Transformers joke about how the Lube Mobile cars are probably Transformer porn stars in disguise. Ba dum tish.
The mobile car mechanic arrived on time and took a look under the hood. He said that one fan belt had died and took the other one with it to fan belt heaven. May they rest in pieces. He fitted the new fan belts, tinkered with a few other problems, then took the car for a test drive. I paid him, took the keys back, and as I was studying the invoice when he asked “do you go out much?” and my brain registered the question as him asking why I wasn’t out anywhere today.
“I had to wait for you to fix the car, I’m going out later” I replied.
“Oh yeah, where you going?”
“Out for dinner” I replied, still studying the invoice.
“With friends, at a pub or something?”
My concentration was broken by the unrelated question that had nothing to do with cars. I looked up from the invoice, thought about what I was doing and said with a smile, “I’m going to my boyfriends father’s house for dinner tonight.” His face dropped. My female brain registered his facial expressions, alerted me, did some calculations, and finally concluded that he was trying to ask me out. My brain has never been very good at in regards to such events, I went through high school unaware that a vast amount of my male friends spent years trying to hit on me.
After an awkward moment of silence he said, “well… ahh… hope you have fun, later, bye.”
I told a friend this story, she laughed, then we spent the next thirty minutes making car related sexual innuendos about lube and revving your engines. Thankfully she thought my Transformer jokes were hilarious.