Friday, April 06, 2007

Why I'm Going to Hell (reason # 476)



We went to Home Depot, and Nils & Anders ran inside while I waited in the van so Addie could keep sleeping. After a few minutes I saw a lady come out of the store with two big patio chairs similar to the one pictured. She tried for several minutes to stuff them into her Mazda Protege. To her left was parked a Dodge Ram; she tried for several minutes to wedge the chairs in that side. I estimate she had about 3 feet to work with. After trying every which way, she realized there wasn't enough room on that side. She went to the other side of the car where no cars were parked, again trying to wedge the chairs in, but no luck. I wondered what she was going to do- she didn't even try to get them into the trunk, but since the chairs were half the size of her entire car, I'm 99% sure they wouldn't have fit in there, either. I thought to myself, "I have this mini-van with the back seats folded down, perhaps I should offer her chairs a lift." After thinking about it for about 3 seconds, I decided not to. I decided to watch her struggle instead.

Fortunately she had her cell phone, so she called someone with a truck and they came to her rescue. If she had sat down on the chairs and started weeping, I probably would have offered her chairs a ride. Probably. That's why I'm going to hell. And because when Nils came out of the store, I told him all about it and we had a good laugh.

4 comments:

Holly said...

I'll see you there, because I had a good laugh too.

courtneyb said...

if it makes you feel better, last time I had the extreme pleasure of being at such a store (you think a home depot exists here!) i saw a guy struggling to put a huge box of some sort into a sedan and it wasn't going to fit. With my lovely suburban, I did offer him a lift and he said "thanks but I live in bountiful" so she could have lived in delta!

David Lesue said...

That was an awesome story. Don't you just love how you always have drawn-out internal conversations you have with yourself in those situations—all while the person struggles away—and then you ultimately end up doing nothing? I do that all the time. Yeah—I'm going to hell too.

Katrina said...

Well, it's good to know I'll have some company! Courtney, you're a shining example to the rest of us.