I'm going to stick with my declaration of AC/DC being the winner. Because I heart them. That Webb Pierce thing which TWO of you submitted? Um, no. Just no. That brings back too many memories of having to sit with my Mam-ma watching Lawrence Welk and his bubbles on Saturday nights down in Vidalia, Georgia. Usually followed by Hee Haw or my Poppie would take over the living room to watch an Atlanta Braves game while listening to the play-by-play of a different baseball game on the radio and reading the newspaper sports section about the games from the day before while gnawing on a cigar. He was a multi-tasker and I adored my Poppie. Except for his baseball/newspaper reading/cigar gnawing habit.
Second Place goes to Sadie! I also heart blues music and Muddy Waters is one of my favorites.
And if you'd like to see her submission you're going to have to copy and paste what I give you in a minute into your browser. Blogger has a You Tube search thing built into it when you want to embed a video. Sadie's submission is not coming up when I search and I have not been able to figure out how to copy and paste a link to embed because technology hates me.
Here is Sadie's submission: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98btg7T4tWI
Third Place goes to Bobbi because how can you talk about prison songs and not think of this one? And because Johnny is shooting us a bird and making an EFF YOU! face (I hope that's what shows up when this post is published or y'all are going to wonder what on earth I'm talking about.)
In unrelated news, I have two bosses now that one of my bosses left our firm and let's just say that one of them is a gigantic challenge to work for on a good day.
He came to my desk this morning and said, "You are not going to believe what I did yesterday."
And yesterday was not fun because our entire system for internet, phones, and emails crashed for about half of the day and it's the third time it's happened in a week. Our IT department is happy with our provider as you can imagine. Especially since we are considered a leading technology law firm and our technology keeps crashing.
Anyway, my boss came up to me this morning and told me that he came in the office yesterday morning and left his car running all day long in the parking deck. I asked him if it ran out of gas and he said it was on empty when he got in it last night and he prayed he would make it to the gas station. He made it to the gas station but discovered he had a flat tire. So he had himself a great day of not being able to communicate with any of his clients and a great night of car problems.
It reminded me of something I did back in high school. My dad was a firm believer in supporting mom and pop operations when you could. His theory was that they couldn't afford advertising like big companies so they had to do a good job and provide good service in order to stay in business because they relied on word of mouth advertising. I have to say his theory makes a lot of sense.
We always took our cars for service by a family run place and it was a couple of miles down the road from us and they had built a garage behind their house and that's where they fixed our cars.
My younger brother and I shared a car for a period of time and this car had many weird mechanical issues so it was in the shop a whole bunch. One day a friend of mine dropped me off to pick up the car from the family mechanic and I realized I had no more checks on me to pay them. Because they knew us so well he told me to go ahead and take the car and I could drop a check off the next day.
The next day I went back to pay them and it was pouring down rain. I parked in their driveway and ran as fast as I could inside to drop off the check. I ran back outside to my car and discovered I had locked the door. With my car still running. The lights were still on. The defrost was blasting. And the windshield wipers were flapping.
So I ran back inside and as embarrassed as I could be, I told the owner what I had done. He asked if I had another key at home and I said I did. He asked me if I could get in my house and I said I could. The owner had to drive me to my house to get a car key and my entire family never let me live it down.
I wish I could tell you that taught me a lesson and I never locked my keys in my car again.
But I can't tell you that.
Because about a year later I stopped at a friend's house in my neighborhood to drop something off and I did it again. With the car running and almost on empty. And it ran out of gas in her driveway.
I totally just checked my purse to make sure my keys are in there.
They are.
This also reminds me of a story I need to tell you about this boss with a flat tire and his interview here. It is crazy.
But please tell me all of you have locked your keys in your car with it running at least once.
I can't tell you that, but I can tell you about a friend who ran over herself with her own car. And that's probably why she finally had to have knee replacement surgery this year.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for second place!
I cannot tell you that, either, but a coworker, well, he wins the prize.
ReplyDeleteHe pulled up in the alleyway to pick up a job he needed to delivery from the shop out back, locking his keys in the running car in the process. It took a bit, but one of the guys happened to have a slimjim in his car so they got the door open and away the salesman sped to deliver said job.
Only, in the confusion of it all, he failed to actually put the job in his car.
So back he careens into the alley (which the window of my office looks out onto), but he's "smart" this time and leaves the car door open so as not to repeat his earlier mishap. He walks into the building and, as I'm shaking my head, I see his car start to roll backward towards the street.
Yes, the genius had remembered not to lock himself out, but not to put the car into PARK! The only thing that saved said car from rolling into the street or across it and into the buildings there was that the open door (oh, yes, that brilliant bit of thinking there) snagged on our ginormous recycling dumpster, wrenching said door into an unnatural position but stopping the car fairly effectively.
The real kicker, though, is that within a few hours of all of this, he managed to find a spare driver's side door at the local pick-and-pull, the same make, model, AND COLOR!
He may not have been born under a bright star, but the boy was certainly born under a lucky one.
After reading Beverly's and your stories, I'm going to continue obsessively verifying that I have the car keys in my hand before locking the car door.
DeleteI can admit to having locked my keys in the car twice during my life. Thankfully, it was a long time ago and the car was not running.
Holy cow, Scraps! I hope I never beat that one.
DeleteI'm pretty paranoid about making sure my keys are in my hand when I close the door, anyway, but things like this still make me extra careful!
DeleteI've never done that either, but there was an older gentleman at church that locked his keys in the car and it was running...during the entire service. When we left church he was scratching his head trying to figure out how he was going to get into his car.
ReplyDeleteWell, one time I had to deliver something to my aunt's house and had my kidlets in their car seats in the back seat and since it is a HUGE PITA to get 2 kids unbuckled and haul them in for 5 minutes and then go through the same thing again in reverse I left the car running and the a/c on so the kids wouldn't die and ran in. Ran right back out to find that my son had climbed out of his car seat and gotten into the driver seat and locked the door and was attempting his first driving lesson. (It's a wonder that boy made it into adulthood and that I am not in jail with the shenanigans he has pulled.)
ReplyDeleteI did finally get him to push the unlock button and get it handled.
But! Let me tell you about one of my co-workers. Let's call him Larry. Larry had the post office box key for our office mail and one fine Saturday morning went to get the mail and took his English Bulldog, Jigs with him to get the mail. He did the same as me, left the car running with the a/c in order for Jigs to not perish in the Texas heat and ran in to get the mail. When he came out he found that Jigs had knocked the gear shift out of park and into reverse and with the wheels turned , the car backed itself around right smack into the building and damaged the outer wall of the post office.
You can imagine our company insurance man's surprise when he had to submit a claim to a government building by a bulldog driving one of our company cars. We told that story for years much to Larry's chagrin.
Ha ha ha ha ha! Poor Larry.
DeleteThat's amazing! I would LOVE to have been that insurance adjuster. ROFL!
DeleteYes, I have locked my keys in the car, but worse than that, I flushed them down a toilet in Lexington, Ky en route to the Greater Cincinnati Airport 1 1/2 hours away. That was a really, really, really bad day.
ReplyDeleteI've done it, too. I came home from the grocery store and ran to open the garage door, and when I went to get back in -- the doors were locked. Too-pid, too-pid, toopid. I do the same thing Sadie does -- obsessively check before I make a move!
ReplyDelete