He Had Been Around Heavy Machinery Too Much

Tuesday became an interesting day very early on. I only had one class and it passed quickly, after dismissal I made my way to the college post office to check for any graded class work. In my mailbox I found an assignment from hermeneutics, one that I was eagerly awaiting to be returned. My eagerness was met with disappointment when I looked at the paper and thought it said 7/10. I was almost devastated. I realize how pithy it may sound to be upset over a 70% but I work very hard on all my assignments. On this particular paper I spent at least an hour on and to be honest I enjoyed the study and felt I had a great grasp of the concepts. That Tuesday morning was very dreary for me and the walk home was more of a hopeless trudge. By the time I had reached my house I had already planned how I was going to contest the grade to my teacher the next time I saw him. I unlocked the door, stumbled in and plopped down on the couch. I was supposed to spend the next few hours studying for my Bible Doctrine Overview exam on Wednesday but the first hour was consumed by distraction and discouragement. As time went on I pushed the paper to the back of my mind and asked God to help me focus on studying. He indeed helped and I got some quality learning time in before I had to drop Katie‘s car off to be looked at by a mechanic at 1:00. I’ll tell you more about this paper in a moment but I want to tell this chronologically and it’s my story so that’s what I’ll do.

I left the car at the mechanic shop, gave the gentleman my keys and filled out the necessary paperwork. A friend had to drive me back home because Katie was at work. Back up one sentence and notice the phrase “gave the gentleman my keys.” Yeah, I gave him my keys, all of them. How bout that? I didn’t even realize what I’d done until I got home and began rummaging my pockets for the house key. This could have turned out much worse because I only had twenty minutes to get changed and get to my physical education class and I had no way of getting to Katie in time to borrow her keys. Luckily, the family who oversees the married community here lives only one house away and they had a master key to let me in. After a hearty thanks to my neighbor I closed the door from the inside and dashed upstairs to get changed. I grabbed my spare set of keys and headed off for physical education.

After P.E. I came home to focus on some more studying. I was only home a few moments before my phone rang. It was Jim, the mechanic who apparently has been around heavy machinery much too long, telling me the verdict on my car. After a few short attempts at basic communication I realized that I needed to speak significantly louder if Jim was going to hear me. I did and we conversed successfully. The problem with our car is that the ABS and traction light’s are staying on. I don’t consider it a big deal, the car drives great, but the state of West Virginia won’t let it pass inspection with these lights on. We paid Jim to tell us how to fix these lights and the associated problems. He informed me in a solemn tone that to even begin properly diagnosing our car they would have to replace the computer module (which would cost about $1000 between parts and labor). Jim then said that after that the repairs could bring us to a total of $2500. Just so you know Katie only paid $2375 for the car two years ago. The situation was really a no-brainer: there’s no means or reason for us to spend this much money on Katie’s car, it will be sold. I thanked Jimbo and told him I would be by to pick it up later.

By this time I figured it had been a pretty interesting day and I was looking forward to telling Katie about it. I hopped off the couch to pull out my horrible hermeneutics homework so that I could have a visual aid when I told her later. As I pulled it back out I realized there was a zero after the seven on my grade. Naturally, I deduced there is no way to have a 70/10 so what I thought was a 7 was actually a 1 with a slight hook because the teachers pen had run out of ink. Waves of relief rushed over me and for a few moments I was able to laugh at myself just as I’m sure you are laughing at me now.

The day turned out not to be so bad. What I had thought was a 70% was actually a 100%. I could have avoided much heartache if I wouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. I got locked out of my house but I live right next to the landlord so that wasn’t bad at all. I even got some shocking news about one of our cars but that isn’t really bad. Katie and I have been talking about selling one of the cars but weren’t sure which. We like her car but it takes premium gas and is high on insurance because of the supercharged engine. All the problems were solved for us. We know which one needs to go and it didn’t require any hard thought. If the repairs had only been $300 we might have spent the money and still not have fixed the problem. But with repairs totaling up to $2500 there’s no question that we are getting rid of her car. This will save on insurance, gas and we shouldn’t have any trouble getting around this small town with just one car.

That was our Tuesday, I would love to tell you more but you know I resist abnormally long posts. If a post is long enough for the sun to set before you finish reading it then it’s too long and that’s why I’m cutting this one off right here by saying “goodbye everyone.”