A shopping trip to remember

The following story happened last week when my friend and roommate Kassie and I went to Provo for some Christmas shopping. I was going to report on it, but Kassie did it so well, I've cut and pasted the story below. I didn't ask permission, but she'll forgive me. It really was a funny night.

"WARNING, this is a long whiney story, but it makes me laugh just to relive it.

"Arti and I drove to Provo/Orem to do some shopping (I thought that I had to work, but it was only Tuesday, and I work on Wednesday. Working nights messes up my body schedule to the point that I have no idea what day it is) . . . anyway that is another story.

"We got all of our shopping done hunky dory, and are ready to head home when I decide that I need to fuel up. Stopping at a nearby Holiday Gas Station (the one with the creepy clown guy); I start the process of putting fuel into my car. I’m standing outside in the freezing cold (because you can’t get back in because you don’t want to start a static electric sparked fire), when I get the bright idea that I need to clean my windshield somehow in the 283 degrees below zero weather. After chipping the little sponge/squeegee cleaner thing out of its bucket of ice I begin to spread a thin layer of water on my windshield, which froze instantly into a thin film of ice like I totally knew it would, but the look on Arti’s face through the window (like what the crap are you doing) made me start laughing, and somewhere in the hysteria my dang windshield wiper blade just fell off, serious it just died right there in my arms, snapped clean off, irreparably off, I don’t even think that I touched it. I stared down at the carnage and my face must have had some odd form of expression on it because in my peripheral vision I saw Arti laughing so hard she couldn’t even open the door to help me figure out what the crap to do. Here I stand in the freezing cold winter weather, with a dead windshield wiper blade in one hand, the murdering sponge/squeegee thing in the other, and a thin film of ice on my whole windshield. By the time that Arti makes it to my side her tears of joy are freezing as they run down her cheeks. Still stunned I stand there and all I can think are (bad words and dirty names), when the helpful guy at the gas pump next to ours says, “Wal-Mart sells wiper blades for like 5 bucks.” At this point it becomes totally funny, and I begin to laugh almost manically as I grab the scraper to get the ice off (seeing as the windshield wiper blades are useless to me now). We flirt shamelessly with the helpful guy at the next gas pump, and then drive away in search of a Wally World that will help us out at 11 o’clock at night.

"We get to Wal-Mart, the doors to the hardware side are locked so I have to use the other entrance (keep in mind that it is FREEZING COLD OUTSIDE). I finally find the wiper blades in the 10 acre plot of the SUPER Wal-Mart and there before me is about 10,243 different types and sizes of windshield wiper blades (bad words and dirty name) good thing I took the dead wiper with me for size because I didn’t read the owners manual to know what size to grab (I’m use to NAPA where you tell them what you need they grab it from the shelf and even replace it for you). Finally making my selection, I walk the mile back to the checkout stands (where they have 25 registers, but only 3 are open). First line I get in the register dies just dies on the lady in front of me (it must be my curse of the night). The next line I wait in for 6 years before I get to the register, and then the register guy is so busy chatting with me that he starts to swipe everything on the conveyer belt until I’m like wait I only have the windshield wiper blade (the guy behind me was crestfallen when he realized that I wasn’t going to buy his groceries).

"Arti has been waiting in the car, and when she sees me slipping across the black ice rink that passes for a parking lot, she gets out of the heat haven inside the car, because maybe two of us can figure out how to properly attach the cursed black thing before frostbite sets in. Somewhere in figuring out how to attach it the little black contraption that attaches the blade to the arm of the wiper goes flying though the air and disappears. We stand in the parking lot stunned . . . how the crap are we going to find a little BLACK thing at 11 o’clock at night on a black pavement parking lot (bad words and dirty names). Through some form of divine intervention the little black thing is discovered, and the blade attached quite easily (they really are user friendly). Story done. We start for home again with a serious case of the giggles because of the ridiculousness of the situation. At least it wasn't a flat tire, I didn't have my phone with me and we would have needed some serious back-up on that one."