Well, dear readers, after an unacceptably long absence, I will now attempt to soothe your quarantine-addled brains with a story about the funniest thing that happened to me all summer.
A good friend’s parents live just a few blocks from me. Over the past year especially, they’ve helped me a lot with various house- and medical-related crises, and have become something of a surrogate family. My friend, very graciously, has agreed to share them.
So when her dad called me one evening asking for help with a car problem, I said absolutely, come on over.
The deal was this — there was a warning light on in his truck, but he didn’t want to take it in to the shop. Instead, he’d purchased a DIY device that plugged into the diagnostic port, but his phone was too old for the app that was designed to read the code. Since I’d just upgraded to a new iPhone, he wondered if I’d be willing to give it a shot.
We install the app and go out to his pickup. He’s on the driver’s side, I’m on the passenger side. We plug the device in, I punch in all the required information, but the phone won’t connect. We try again. Nothing. We unplug and restart. Nothing.
Dusk is falling, and we’re starting to get frustrated. It’s hot outside, but he has the windows rolled down because he’s a heavy smoker. I peer under the steering column at the numbers on the port, he readjusts the device again. We double-check all the instructions. We uninstall and reinstall. Still nothing.
Finally, we throw our hands up in defeat. I apologize, we say our farewells, and he drives away.
It’s not until I’m back inside my house that it occurs to me that my neighbors — and there were plenty of dog walkers still out and about — had just witnessed me sitting in the dark in a parked truck with a strange older man, periodically leaning over his lap for half an hour. And then, because of the open windows, they heard the following exasperated exchange:
HIM: “Welp, thanks anyway for tryin’!”
ME: “Yeah, I just wish it would’ve worked!”