I had a large sack of Goodwill donations with me (only I had meant for them to be Salvation Army donations, because their prices are cheaper so I like them better) so after sliding along a curb and into the donation center (like a kiosk or shed where you can drop stuff off, but no store to buy stuff, which is sometimes torture) where the stuff is unloaded, I pretended I was there on purpose and gave them the sack of things. Now I was a CUSTOMER. Hm, or was I a REMOTSUC? or a benefactress?
The attendant pretended that middle-of-a-snowstorm-and-barely-moving-traffic was the normal time to do this sort of thing and asked me if I wanted a receipt for my taxes. He had a heavy eastern European accent. He told me I could not leave my car there and suggested I drive across one very slippery slightly slanted driveway to park in a nearby fast foods fried chicken parking lot, pointing out that I would probably need to get a bit of a running start to make the slight incline. While doubt spread across my heart and probably face, 2 other drivers took the last 2 spots there. I knew that he was being firm because he didn't want to lose his job in his new country, and maybe he had snowshoed across craggy snow covered mountains and roasted muskrats for his family at snowy campsites along the way, or he used to be the minister of transportation in Siberia and drove on snow constantly? In the time it took me to calm myself down and decide to beg him, the place suddenly began to close because of snow, and he reversed his decision. Maybe his motherly American coworker convinced him. She told me "Honey, we are all going home, so nobody will bother it tonight anyhow." Whew!
It took me another long snowy hour to walk the rest of the way home, singing "Edelweiss", with my heart now filled with joy (except for suddenly realizing that I might have forgotten to turn the vehicle headlight off.)
At home it looked like this:
and this.
HeadlightS I mean. Plural; I just got them fixed last week. And I hadn't forgotten to turn them off.
Everything was fine when I retrieved the car this morning. But it is good to keep a few things in reserve at all times to worry about.
