September 29th, 2005

why poles should not be in the middle of driveways.

I’d love to begin this post with something outrageously witty, but all I have is this.

I just drove into a pole. Yeah. I’ll let you laugh for a minute or two…

Alright, so here’s the thing. One of the people we sometimes work with (who bugs me) needed to borrow one of our computer monitors and our easel for a dinner/art show thing here in town. It is located in a historic home that has been converted into a garden/gift shop/place for fancy stuff kinda place. This woman’s car was too small to carry the easel, so she asked me to drop it off. No big deal, it’s only two minutes away.

So, in a torrential downpour, the coworker and I loaded the Jeep and headed to the place. I drove in, muttering about the rain and the lack of good signage (went the wrong way, blah, blah), and spotted the woman’s car. It was right in front of the place, which has a covered porch driveway—does that make sense? There’s a gravel driveway that circles up to the front door, and you can get out under the covered portion and hand the valet your key, etc.

OK, so as I’m driving along the gravel circle, the coworker is spouting about how we don’t even like this woman and why are we helping her etc., and my window was down, so I looked out the window and said, “Shush, my window is down and she might hear you.” And then, from the passenger side, “Watch out, there’s a……”—THUNK.

Damn pole in the middle of the damn freaking driveway. Who does that?!? One pole was along my side, so I was looking at it and it didn’t even occur to me that there was another pole in the middle of the damn driveway. And I nailed it.

Fortunately it was short pole (about as high as my hood), and it came pretty much clear out of the ground—I drove over it.

So we get out of the car and survey the damage—in the pouring rain. I went to the pole and the coworker went to the front of my car—see how nice I am? (Not really, I’m just perpetually scared of people getting mad at me.)

Now, I should probably mention that this is a stuffy function and stuffy people run this place. Bad, bad, bad.

We unload the car, laughing mind you, and talk to the woman we work with and blah, blah, blah. Then we realize that a) we can’t get out because there’s another damn pole, and b) the woman didn’t actually need the heavy easel we brought her so that had to go back in the car. This meant, of course, that we had to go back into the building of stuffy people who now think we’re vagrants. Yes, vagrants. Because we are in jeans and t-shirts, drenched by the rain and laughing hysterically, while they are in dresses and heels with perfect hair. Fabulous.

As we are loading the car again, a woman comes out and says, “How did you get in here?” To which I replied, “Well, that’s actually a pretty funny story.”

She didn’t think so.

She was a little perturbed.

So she says, “I’ll get this pole in the front and you go and get that one out [the one that is basically knocked over on its side] and put it off to the side.”

So the coworker and I walked over and attempted to haul the evil pole, which was cemented into the driveway, out.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING? NOT THAT WAY!!”

Apparently there is a key. The poles come out.

She did not say anything about a key. She just said to pull it out. Sheesh. Ya do what you’re told and the people just yell.

The coworker and I, at this point, are close to hysterics. The woman was lucky we were ladylike enough to just nod and do what we were told.

Oh, and my car, you ask?

The license plate holder needs fixed—desperately.