"Can I TELL You Something?"

The question, "Can I tell you something?" always proposes a conundrum for me. 

It's nearly always asked by a child, which means there will be something possibly... unnerving on the other side of it.  So in the spirit of taking lemons and making them into lemonade, I'm putting them on the blog, hoping you will find them as hysterical as I do. 

But this first one (and it's a doozy) comes courtesty of those wise, aged people we fondly address as adults.

Wednesday afternoon it began snowing in Central Kentucky.  Apparently I am the one person who watches the accurate weather forecaster because of the three other women in my complex I was the only one who had seen the possibility of one to two inches of snow on the news that morning. 

And the entire city of Lexington must have slept through the 5 a.m. news cast because the city did not pre-treat the roads.  Which is why when Jennifer said to me at 3:10, "It's sticking-you better get home," I got.

A normal commute takes me an hour on a slow day.  30 minutes after leaving school, I still hadn't made it out of the county.  And that's where the drama begins.  The orange wrench came on, signaling my car needed service.  This happened last month on a snow day-I took it to the local Ford dealership, they took one look at the code, were buffaloed as my daddy would say, cleared the code, and it fixed my car.

So I did what all good girls do when you're driving a convertible on snowy roads worsening by the minute: I glowered at my dash, knowing full well it wouldn't do any good, but I had to do something.  Then traffic began to pick up a little, so I did something that actually made sense:  

I called the good people at Ford. 

Since I have a Blackberry, I was able to look up the website of the Ford dealer in my town.  And there were two numbers listed: Sales and Service.  Being not a complete idiot, I called the Service number.  When the receptionist answered, I explained (patiently) my plight. 

"Well, honey, I'll have to transfer you over to Service.  This is the front desk."  Okay, then why are you answering the number I dialed for service? 

Then Michelle at the Service desk picks up.  I calmly explained my situation, to which she replies, "You need Lee.  Let me transfer you."  Since I'm still trying to navigate my vehicle amidst a ton of snow and bad drivers, I wasn't listening when a gentleman answered.  Since this was the third person with whom I had spoken, I was growing slightly more desperate as I recounted my predicament.  And what was HIS response?

"Hold on a minute.  You need Lee."

By now I'm ten miles from my house, tired and irate.  The phone rings again, "Ford, this is Mike.  How can I help you?"

"Mike, you can't.  I need Lee.  I've had the last two people tell me that." 

"Are you sure?  What's going on."  So for the fourth time, I recount how this wrench is on, it comes on after 30 minutes, they've cleared the code once, but it's come on again and if it happened again I should bring it out there and how I KNOW it's 4:00 but is there anyway they can get a chance to look at it today?

Do you have ANY IDEA what Mike's next words were?

"So what do you want us to do?"

I credit my my mother and her southern values for me not raising my voice.  I politely informed him I would like them to clear my code today and then get an appointment made for when they can diagnose what's causing the wrench to appear.

Can I tell you something?  It's no lie when I say people say the dumbest stuff to me.