"What was that?" Mollie asked.
"I think I hit a pothole," I signed. "No big deal."
We both heaved a sigh of relief. I dropped Mollie off, giving her a big hug, and then started on my way back home. BUMP! It happened again!
"Man, there's got to be something wrong." I decide to drive to the nearest auto mechanic and see if they can help me.
I pull up to the service station.
"Something's wrong with my van. It keeps bumping or something."
"Is it making any odd noises?" The man behind the counter seemed very nice.
"I'm Deaf. Can you write that down?" I ask. And he does.
"Oh, well obviously, because I can't hear, I wouldn't know." Duh. The man behind the counter blushes and asks me the kind of van I have.
"Uh...silver?" I honestly have no idea. "I'm pretty sure it is a Ford of some sort." I cringe.
It is a Chrysler Town and Country. And thank goodness for this man being polite about it.
"Have a seat and I'll do a test drive."
The man eventually takes my keys and heads out to figure our what's wrong. I stay in the lobby, watching some uncaptioned soap opera on their television.
"I see what worried you. I'm glad you brought it in. Looks like you're losing fuel out of your gas cup and the entire left sided Spockter Galley is loose."
I had absolutely no idea what the man just said, so I asked him (again) to write it down and he did.
"Oh my! I'm glad I brought it in, too! Can you fix it?"
"Well, we can fix it, but it's pretty major work. If we start on it now we can have it done in about four hours.
Wow! Four hours = a lot of labor costs.
"Well, I guess there's no question here. I mean, it's gotta be done, right?"
"I'm afraid so. These kinds of repairs will run you about $2500. But if you like, I can throw in a few free fluid checks."
"Great! Thank you SO much," I said, sincerely grateful.
There was a mall across the street, so I decided to spend my time waiting, window shopping. Four hours went by very slowly. When the time was up I headed back to the mechanic.
"Hi! I dropped off my van four hours ago and the guy said it'd be ready by now."
"What work did we do on that one?" The other guy was checking the books.
"Something with my gas cup and Spockter Galley."
The man looked up from his books and gave me the weirdest look. After a couple of seconds his light bulb came on. "Oh! Yeah! You're the Deaf lady. Sorry about that. Yes, it's ready. It cost us a little more to fix than we expected though. Your total came to $3300."
Heaving a big sigh, I handed over my credit card. I then took my van and headed home. BUMP! I was dumbfounded, so I asked my hubby to test drive it when I got home.
"It's OK, You must have just hit some of the holes in the street. Michigan got it pretty bad last winter."
That's when I broke the news to him.
"$3300!!! For what?!?!"
I told him and just stood there with a bizarre stare in his eyes. He was obviously as stunned as I had been.
When I saw he was upset, I did my best to calm him. "Hey, it's OK. They did some free stuff, too. They even filled up our blinker fluid on both sides. No charge!"
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