Remembering a Funny Story

Today, on my way up to the Cities for a conference I drove by this semi that was pulled over to help someone change a flat tire and it made me remember a funny little story that happened to me (about 10 years ago now - man, am I getting old).

I was 19 years old and was making the 5 hour drive across WI with my 18 year old friend Jeni to go back to my hometown for a visit. We left very early in the morning or late at night (whatever you want to call it) and started our journey. It had to be about 6:30 in the morning when all of a sudden I heard a loud sound and the car started driving funny; Jeni was sleeping. I pulled the car over to the side of the road and turned on my hazards. Jeni woke up and asked what was going on & I told her I think we had a flat. Upon inspection, we discovered that we indeed had a flat. Shit! We're about 10 miles from the next town and about an hour left to my parents house. Dammit! Neither one of us ever changed a tire before, but we knew we could do it. So, here we are, 2 teenagers sitting along the side of the road looking like blond idiots trying to figure out what we were going to do next. (I had AAA, but what good was that going to do me w/o a cell phone. Now things are different.) Then, all of a sudden this semi pulls off the side of the road behind us. Nothing is scarier than seeing a semi coming straight for you. They had 2 adult guys & seemed to be one guy our age in that semi and they got out and asked if they could help. Wow! This had the makings of a horror movie already. We said we were fine & were just going to put on the small donut spare and be on our way. They insisted that they do it for us. We were nervous, but let them. Hell! We sure didn't know what we were doing. They go to pick up the cover over the spare, and what do you know -- several bottles of booze & cans of beer are stashed there. I wonder how those got there. Hmmmm....considering we were going back and my friend Mike & I were throwing a party at his parents house while they were gone, well, it couldn't have been mine. Shit. Yes it was. Of course, we felt this urge to explain, but didn't. We just offered them a beer @ 6:30am. The young guy took a beer and watched while the older two replaced the tire and also he sat & flirted with Jeni. She found him kinda cute. The older guys finished & I offered them the only money I had in my wallet (which for some reason I remember my dad telling me to keep some emergency money, in case of an emergency, like paying someone to change my tire.) They didn't take it. We drove to the nearest town, all the time wondering what would have happened if Jeni would have exchanged numbers with that guy. We fantasized about going on Oprah and telling the story how she met her husband @ 6:30am when these guys stopped to change our tire and we offered them a beer. Crazy girls.

We did have our party and we were even more crazy then. Most of the people there didn't leave the area by too far or went to schools in small cities, I was the only one who actually went to a big city, so they were pretty shocked when Jeni & I were dancing provacitively with one another. We loved doing that, because it pushed people's boundaries & shocked them (which was fun to do.) I was mad at this one guy I was friends with because he was dating my middle sister (he was a freshmen in college, she a freshmen in high school) and Jeni was going to do all she could to help me out with that. It first started with me yelling at him through Jeni -- see, I wasn't talking to him & didn't want to look at him. And when you're drunk you get bright ideas like having one person make the motions & wave their hands like idiots while the other person stands behind them and does the yelling. I couldn't possibly look at him & yell at him, so she had to do one. The logic of a drunk college girl isn't always the greatest. She took it one step further (all on her own accord) and decided to make out with him and leave some hickeys on his neck (he couldn't possibly go out with my sister with hickeys from another girl.) It was pretty funny & she thought she was funny for doing it.

It was a weekend full of stories. The next time she came back to my hometown with me didn't start off too different. That one started with being pulled over for speeding (which I never got warnings for, always tickets), but I'll save that story for another day.

I just felt like sharing the story as I remembered it today. I had a chuckle from remembering it.