Confessions of a Wife of a Redneck...3. Birdseed

You might be a redneck if the taillight covers of your car are made of red tape... or if people hear your car a long time before they see it... or if you think the movie Mechanic is about somebody who repairs cars...

  
Once when I did stand-up comedy, someone asked me how I did it.  Two things are important to work as a comedian:  you have to be able to laugh at yourself and not worry about what others think.  The one person in my life I had the hardest time making laugh was my husband--he'd laugh at others but not me. I'd make myself crazy trying to impress him with my wit. I imagine that on judgment day, God will explain to him one of his sins,  "I gave you a funny wife and you didn't laugh."  He never laughed at this story, but I am telling it anyway.


Hubby often worked as a mechanic.  When he worked all day under a hood of a vehicle, he hated to work on his own car, or more specifically he hated to work on mine. At one time I had an Audi.  I loved that car, but Hubby always put off repairing it.  He said he didn't work on "furrin" cars.  My youngest son and I did minor repairs using the owner's manual as a guide and we did a pretty good job.  It developed a problem we couldn't fix, though, the headlights wouldn't shut off; even with the engine off and the key pulled the lights stayed on; the fuse box was a mess.  I temporarily solved the problem, by raising the hood and unplugging the lights, every time I shut the engine off-- of course I'd have to plug them back in when I got ready to go again.  Eventually, I left only the high beams plugged in and turned the dimmer switch to low to turn off the lights.  I thought I was pretty clever.

When I was in college Hubby had an auto repair shop and he sold used cars on the side, he often drove home one of the vehicles for sale and I never knew what kind of car I'd find parked in the drive.  

One night I drove the Audi home and unplugged the lights--that was before I figured out the trick with the high beams--and went into the house.  My oldest son was sitting on the floor with the parakeet crawling all over him.  "Look Mama, this bird is acting weird."  It was odd since the bird was standoffish and didn't like to be touched. I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to feed it and I had been out of birdseed for a couple of days.  I couldn't even remember the last time the parakeet had eaten.  I felt like a murderer. I freaked out and ran out the door intent on getting to the store before it closed at 10.  I didn't want to bother with opening the hood and plugging in the lights of the Audi so I jumped in the car Hubby had driven home from work and raced to the store.  I parked in the parking lot and hurried inside just before the store closed.  There were a lot of people in line and I impatiently waited clutching the box of bird seed, praying the critter wouldn't keel over before I got home.

I finally got checked out and the manager opened the door to let me out.  This store was not in a good neighborhood and I had just stood in line with some scary looking people.  I went straight to the car, got in and put the key in the ignition and tried to turn it but it wouldn't work.  As I was frantically trying to start the car--with a starving bird on my mind--I glanced over to the passenger seat.  "Funny," I thought, "I don't remember that junk there."  Then I turned and looked to the left and saw the car I had driven parked 4 spaces away.  I don't even know how I'd made that mistake because I had driven a dark green car to the store and and the one I was trying to start was white.  I felt like a burglar caught red-handed in the bank vault.  And the owner of the car was one of those scary looking people still inside the store.

I jumped out and ran over to the green car, relieved that I hadn't got caught in a stranger's  car,  and as I was getting in,  I realized I had left the bird seed on the seat of the white car.  If the store had been opened I would have just bought another box and left the owner of the white car to wonder where the bird seed came from, but I had no other choice. I wasn't going home without food for the parakeet.  I hurried over to the white car,  jerked opened the door, grabbed the box of seed and ran back to the green car driving out of that neighborhood like a bat outta hell.  Sometimes things that happen to me won't seem funny until years later, but that night, once I was sure no one was in hot pursuit, I laughed all the way home.  The parakeet survived-- I can't remember if we gave it away or if the cat ate it but I assure you I never forgot to feed it again.

 Source of redneck jokes:  http://www.lilligren.com/Redneck/300_reasons_redneck.htm