I left home at about 6p to pick up my son from basketball practice. I had to wear two sweaters and a shawl, because I didn't have a coat to put on. As you may remember, I had two winter coats, down from about seven. How did that happen? (Click here for the answer. ) More importantly, how did I end up with no coat to wear tonight? Well, it went something like this:
My son told me a couple of years ago that he wanted to shovel snow during the winter months to make extra money. Cool, I said, and offered to take him out shovel shopping. I figured I'd make him up some flyers. Heck, maybe even some little business cards. I failed to realize that when today's teenager talks about shoveling snow, they really mean "blowing" snow. Yeah...he asked for a snowblower. He got busy checking out Craigslist and Ebay. He was seriously thinking that I was going to buy him a used snowblower, or any snowblower for that matter. I wasn't going to spend the money, and at that time, he was too young, in my opinion, to be messing around with machinery. Needless to say, he never got that business off the ground.
As luck would have it, I received a snowblower a couple of months ago, the spoils of an estate sale that I ran. My son asked me to get some gas and oil for it, and I was willing to oblige. We've been inundated with snow for the past couple of weeks, so he may actually be able to start his business after all and make a few bucks before winter is over. I went to the gas station with the gas can and stood in the dirty, slushy mess, the result of a rare above freezing day. I was wearing my silver sparkled Skechers, which made me mad anyway because I did't realize it was so messy out. Gas was 3.69. I filled a one gallon can. It cost me $4.92. I'm getting to the part that caused me to be coatless on a cold January day. In Chicago.
Gas comes out of the pump with a great deal of force. I don't remember having this problem before, but when it hit the bottom of the can, it jumped out onto my feet. I held it closer to the bottom and it splashed out all over the ground. I held it back and tried again. This time it "geysered", splashing all over my coat and my face. Not a pleasant experience. On top of my coat being soaked and stinky, gasoline being on my lips (I sputtered for quite a while), and my sparkly shoes being gassy, I spent an extra $1.23 and THAT really hacked me off! A dollar and twenty three cents? I could have bought a pair of shoes with that! A coat! A sofa! Well, I could definitely have bought myself a third of a gallon of gas, which would have gotten me to my favorite thrift store. See how I'm always thinking??
So I went straight home and put my coat in the washer. It wasn't dry when I left to pick up my son. The only reason I was buying the gas anyway was for him, so it's his fault. I should have just bought him a shovel. When he makes his first $1.23, he's buying me a coat.
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