Originally posted at http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com on July 22, 2008.
As you might imagine, we’ve been busy lately. Any time you add another little tyke to the brood you can expect to have your schedule tossed upside-down a bit. But a lot of the things that are keeping us busy aren’t necessarily the actual care of the little guy as much as it is indirectly related to simply having the little guy. (“Little” is relative. While little compared to you and me, he was born over 9 lbs and has put on a whopping pound per week. Last night, at 5 weeks, he weighed in at 14 pounds. He’s an eater!)
As for the title of this post, let’s start there. When we were expecting our sixth child, we shuffled our Pontiac Montana seats around and found three bucket seats for the second row so that we could fit six kids in. Later, we picked up a Chevy Venture with the same capability. I did this because the second vehicle was a Dodge Intrepid with a gazillion miles on it and I figured that we’d be seeing that car die some day, and the Venture was a pretty good deal at the time. As fate would have it, the Intrepid hasn’t died yet, and now I’m stuck with two minivans, an Intrepid, and a Ford Truck.
But that’s not all. Enter child #7.
Well, this just threw my plans awry. We can still use the minivans when it’s just Wendy or me driving the kids around. Our oldest can sit in the front and we’re good to go. But when it’s all of us, this no longer works. Enter the coolest possible vehicle someone would ever want to own… the big, white, 12-passenger, cargo van. It’s truly a sight to behold.
The coolest vehicle in the world.
Now, I’m – ridiculously – a five vehicle family. Fear not, I want to rid myself of at least 2 vehicles at this point. I’m thinking the Intrepid now goes and the truck. I’m currently working on finding a home for both. I may even ditch one of the minivans, but if I do that it would be replaced by a car that gets better gas mileage. The big honking van is to be driven only when necessary, because I think it actually gets negative gas mileage.
Anyway, let’s get back to this monstrosity that is now our new vehicle (new meaning “new to us.” It’s a 2006.)
Let’s just say that we were probably the only ones in America looking for something like this with $4/gallon gasoline. And while I think we got a reasonable deal on it, I anticipate more than making that up over time. I think a vehicle that actually runs by burning dollar bills may be more fuel efficient. And we’re just thrilled to death about the color: white. Seriously, I know other colors are out there, but we looked and looked and waited and waited and we just did not find anything we liked that was in decent shape that was anything but white. What gives with the white? I’d like to have flames or something painted on the hood. Yeah… that would be cool.
But I haven’t gotten to the best part. Once again, it is a story of me being an idiot.
You see, the day we bought it, Wendy picked me up over lunch, and then I drove back to work while she drove home with the new van. After work, predictably enough, I went home. I see the van parked outside. I question why this is the case, and I find out that it was like a museum of the day for our kids. Kids are great. If it’s new, it’s interesting. Even a big white van. Well, as I’m standing outside looking at how tall this thing actually is, and comparing it to our garage door, I started wondering if it would actually fit inside. Not one to think things through as I always should, I decide to measure the door and then measure the van… actually that’s a lie. I didn’t think to do that. So, what I really did was call Wendy out so she could watch to make sure it would make it… actually I didn’t think to do that either. No, here was my brilliant plan: “Hey, I’ll just drive it in really slow, and look up and listen really hard, and I’m sure that even if it starts to touch, nothing bad will happen.
This is the way I think. Surprisingly enough, it apparently works out for me enough so that I have an inability to always determine when it’s not a good approach.
So, here I am, looking like a fool, looking up and listening and driving forward as slowly as possible.
Sound effect: “Crunch.”
Me:
I’m thinking, “how could it crunch like that? I wasn’t going that fast!”
I suddenly realize that it was not the top of the van. It was the side. I look over to find that I had ripped the passenger mirror clean off. I had been focusing so much on the top of the van, that I completely forgot that I actually needed to pay attention to the sides. I mean, it wasn’t even close! I pulled that sucker off right from the base of the mirror.
This was about – oh – six hours after we bought it. It’s amazing how angry a person can get at himself. And it really stinks to have nobody but yourself to blame.
As it turns out, the van actually does fit. When driven in properly, that is.
And the mirror is still being held on by duct tape. Yeah… probably want to get that fixed one of these days.
