Thursday, September 18, 2008

Q. Why Did The Nun Cross the Road? --To Get To The Other Tithe!

I don’t want you kids going around thinking that all of my days are like today. Lemme just share with you my day on Tuesday to give you some context. It was the first day of my new class. I awoke late, as I always seem to do on first days, catapulted myself out of bed, into the shower and out the door in under 20 minutes. (Impressive, huh.) As I was nearing my school, what do I notice out my passenger window up ahead to the right? But of course, my daily nun. I was still down the road a stretch, so I took a moment to offer up a little prayer, as I do everyday when a sister crosses my path. In the meantime, what I believe to have happened, was that she had started to cross the street but decided midstream that the speeding car in front of me might just take her out. She must have been very busy that Tuesday morning and needed to get somewhere to further nun, because by the time I got to her she was spitting nails. I mean mad as H-E-double-hockeysticks. Now, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t actually cursing at Speedy Gonzales, but she was at least praying very loudly. And with a very angry face. So, a tad unnerving.

I get to class and settle in. (More on my new class later.) The first part of the lesson goes off without a hitch. But then disaster strikes just after our first break, right after I’d gotten a coffee out of the machine. (Can see what’s coming, huh.) Luckily, I was able to finish most of it before we jumped back into our discussion of Heinrich Steinweg (Henry Steinway.) Isa, my teacher, was explaining the german word for grand piano is “Fluegel”—aka a wing, as in a bird. Well I just didn’t get this the first go-round. So I’d asked for a second explanation, after which the light bulb went on and I got that the “wing” is the lid propped open. “Wing,” I say, “like the wing of a plane." And at that moment, I decided to gesture rather loudly imitating a crocodile’s mouth chomping and bump my notebook, which hits my water bottle, which I swear picked my little plastic coffee cup and sent it a-splattering.

At this moment, I try to jump into clean-up mode (probably before the damn thing had even overturned) but I’m sitting yoga-like with my legs in Indian-style (is that the P.C. term?) like I always do, which sometimes makes my feet go to sleep. So as I’m trying to unravel my 4-foot long giraffe legs, Isa and my new neighbor from the Ukraine have pretty much gotten things under control. Luckily, no coffee got on anyone’s books or clothing, so maybe the nun was blessing Senor Volvo and me...just maybe had a toothache.

After class I roped Laura into running with me to Ikea so I could return a carpet I had bought. (Which incidentally felt like you were walking on sandpaper.) But, of course, no gas. So I pull into a gas station but ended up with the pump on the wrong side of the car. This is not that big of a deal because normally you can just yank the hosey-thing around the back. Of course today, that didn’t quite work. So I pull into another spot. Get out again. Open the gas tank again. But for some reason the nozzle won’t go in my car. I try, try again, and again. Close the whole thing and reopen. Nope. No can do. Cannot figure out what’s going on. I finally call Laura out of the car and she takes two seconds to say, "This says ‘gas.’ Isn’t your car ‘diesel?’"

Thank you Lord (or maybe Sister Mary Curses-Sometimes) and even BMW for putting that feature on my car. Crises averted.

After I fed meines Auto, I go inside to pay the nice man behind the counter who’s been getting a kick outta my performance thus far. So I pay with my debit card, put in my pin number and we start to laugh and joke in German with the extremely classy and (naturally) handsome guy in a suit in line behind me about my brilliance at the gas pump. Mr. Benzine hands me my receipt and I go immediately for the pen on the counter and look for where to sign. He gives me a second, hoping I’ll get a grip, then gently puts his hand on mine in a not-at-all-sexual way and says is absolutely perfect English, “I don’t need your signature, you’ve already put in your pin number.”

Tshus and Danke. Got outta there as fast as I could. It appears that “Idiot” is spelled with a capitol ‘ME” after all.

2 comments:

Laura said...

Hilarious!!! Freakin hilarious!!! Love the end with Idiot being spelled with a capital Me, ha, ha, ha.....you're still a good person :) Remember though, your car takes Benzin, not Diesel ;)

Kristen said...

Ok, that's the first time I laughed out loud reading something since Skipping Christms!! I can see EVERYTHING you said happening to you!!! ...not that you're an idiot, but because you are about as spacy as me, like the time I ended up in Nuernberg instead of Berlin (ok, your blunders are a little less pricey...)

But anyway, thanks for the good laugh, and I miss you!