SURPRISE!

So I was sitting in the pharmacy waiting for my prescription when I got the call from my car leasing agency, informing me that my lease had ended. Last week. This was a surprise, but not the good kind of surprise like when you take out your winter coat and find a twenty in the pocket, but the kind of surprise like when your teenager calls to tell you he got a detention and can you call the principal and get him out of it. While I was trying to wrap my head around how I was supposed to turn it in by the end of the day when there wasn’t even an inkling of a new car on my horizon, the pharmacist came out from behind the counter and started whispering to me about the cost of the prescription and did I have a prescription plan? I don’t, so just cut that prescription in half, I only need to take it for one day anyway, and she looks at me like I’m crazy and I know she must be noticing the enormous cold sore on my lip, but geez, that’s what I’m here for. And why does she keep whispering?

I finally got the pills and hightailed it out of there in a mad panic to test drive a car, all the while wondering how I could eke out another day or two with my old car without having to pay a penalty, which was going to be difficult considering I was looking to downsize to a completely different vehicle, and I’m way over mileage, not to mention the tons of dings and “wear and tear” and NO WONDER SHE WAS WHISPERING SHE THINKS I HAVE GENITAL HERPES!!! Ugh. Whatever.

How can I describe the next two days of haggling with car dealers? Not unlike the moment I discovered that Trader Joe’s had been LYING on the bag of their Dark Chocolate Covered Mini Pretzels, that they were not 10 calories each, but 30! If that exact moment when I felt cheated, dismayed and completely mistrusting of everything and everyone in my life, had lasted for two whole days, that pretty much describes it. Except I also had a migraine, feelings of disgust, and yes, a little pity for the dealers themselves, although Maverick says I’m being too generous: acting like they are dumber than a rock is all part of the game they play to sell cars. But it seems to me that if you can’t remember something as simple as a client wanting leather seats, so you keep offering her cars with leatherette seats, like four or five times, you’re only going to piss her off, not sell her the car. And if you say you are going to do a search of all the dealers on the east coast of the United States, and I say I am going to do the same thing if you tell me you didn’t find what I want, and then you don’t find what I want, and I find it, and then I go ahead and make the deal myself, you shouldn’t be surprised when I stop answering your incessant phone calls and messages to my cell phone which you PROMISED you would not abuse the privilege of knowing.

If you are thinking, “Wow, D. Parker, you really got yourself wound up!” you’re right. So tightly, in fact, that by the time we sat down to dinner at our favorite pizzeria (when one has no wheels, one doesn’t walk to the Foodtown) I wasn’t even relaxed after my second drink. So unrelaxed, in fact, that one might have called me combatative. Case in point, when the waitress brought our pizzas, and one looked significantly smaller than it should. Maverick politely asks the waitress, “Is this pie a medium?” to which she replies, “We don’t make medium, just small and large.” Duh, we eat here every week, we know that. So is this one a small or a large? “Well, that one’s in between.” In between? Like medium?? “Well,” I chime in, not so politely, “we ordered a large.” Waitress says, “Well, do you see how it’s a little thicker than normal? They just didn’t roll it out all the way.” WTF?? “Okay,” I counter, getting ready to unleash all of my frustration with Alex and Jeremy of the Princeton dealership who were tag-teaming, keeping me confused because they have the exact same voice and I could never tell which one I was talking to, which hardly matters since they dropped me like a brick, “you can take it back to the kitchen and tell them to roll me out a large!” I mean really, what is the world coming to when the pizza guy gets lazy rolling out the dough? Furthermore, everyone knows that a pizza not rolled out to full capacity has less cheese! Like I look forward to telling “Trader” Joe, whoever he is, whenever he responds to my emails and certified letters about the pretzels: Don’t mess with my food!

Well I did finally get a car, only having to inconvenience Maverick and Bianca for four days of chauffeuring me around, which I’m not gonna lie, felt kinda good, like I was giving them a dose of what my day to day life is like. Plus it got me out of doing lots of things I hate like food shopping and running out to Staples to buy whatever Charles forgot he needed for his big project that he forgot to mention, and going to the gym. And in case you were wondering, my herpes is almost gone, Jeremy/Alex still hasn’t called me back, the other guy is still leaving me three messages a day, and although I didn’t find a twenty in my pocket, my mother-in-law did throw a dollar in the backseat of my new car.

“Trader” Joe, I’m still gunning for you.