Just Call Me the Village Idiot...

****EDITED TO SAY: WOW! I totally am an idiot. I forgot the "call" and misspelled "village."
Or Cilena. Or Billie.

So, once, my grandmother backed into a house. She wasn't even in the car. And, also there's this story about her somehow parallel parking a tractor in a gate gap. It wasn't on purpose.

My mother is known for her backing ineptness. There's even a song "She goes backing and smashing and crashing cars." And trucks, and garage doors, and poles...

And these ladies have lovely qualities that I am happy to share with them. The backing issue is not one of them. And I didn't think I shared it till today. I can parallel park (on purpose). I can back into parking spaces with one try. I've never hit anything backing (except once I forgot I had my hitch in and kinda tapped a tree, but neither truck nor tree was injured so I'm not so sure that counts) and really like to make fun of those ladies for their backing issues.

I can't so much do that anymore.

So, I don't know how to explain this to someone who hasn't seen it, but, I guess so the driveway could be level, one side of the driveway is built up with a little curb around the edges. I've been parking in the same spot since we moved here, cuz it's in the shade.

There was this combination of events (kid in my car yesterday so the review mirror was turned funny, somebody parked next to me and parked extra close to the curb, and there's something wrong with the seat where it keeps moving till you push the button and I was trying to fix it) that led me to back up a little far so that when I let off the brake, my car rocked back and fell off the driveway. Yup. Fell right off.

I got out and looked. The rear passenger wheel was off the driveway and just hangin' there in mid air. It was resting on the arm for the independent rear suspension. Which holds the weight for the car anyways, so it wasn't like it was terribly bad for the car, but I couldn't get it to move.

I kinda thought, man, this must be a really bad dream.

There's no way this actually just happened.

But oh no.

It certainly had.

So, I, in my normal calm, cool, collected manner, began calling. I called Robert. I called my Momma. I called my brother. I called Robert again. I called Momma again. I called my brother again. None of them had to work today. Robert had gone to pick up his check from work, but wasn't actually working.

Called them all again. None picked up. So, I called my Daddy. Was he, by any chance, near CS? No, no he wasn't.

Called the round again. Tried my friend that I knew wouldn't be able to help other than to calm my panic. Didn't answer.

Called work to say I'd be late. Racked my brain to think of people in CS that could help and weren't at work ( : ) or asleep) and came up with no one.

Called the round again. My brother answered!!! He'd talked to my Daddy and was on his way over. Talked to my Momma. Calmed down. FINALLY got a hold of my husband. He was at the bank. With cars in front and behind (like George Lopez's "Jack in the Box" there's some language). But was on his way as soon as possible.

Robert beat my brother by a few minutes. We started with his jack and jacked it up as far as it would go. Brother showed up and we used a big, fat rope to tie his truck to my truck. He took the slack out of the rope and then we used his jack to try to get that wheel close to level with the rest of the Explorer.

As we are jacking it up, I kid you not, it began raining. SERIOUSLY. Which did cool it off. But, really. REALLY?! Yup.

Then my brother pulled with his truck and at the same time I floored it and we got me back on solid land. In the rain.

Robert didn't want me to drive it till my Daddy looked it over. So, Brother takes me to work and hangs out around town (buys a tow cable lol) and then takes me home. Daddy checks Explorer out. I drive around the neighborhood. Seems fine.

I need to go pick up antibiotics for my ear infection. I stay on the feeder to be safe, but it seemed completely fine!

On my way home, I saw an Escape Limited blocking traffic on the feeder at my exit. There was a guy walking across the street with a gas can. I'm pretty sure that they, like I, have a miles-to-empty meter. So, at least I'm not that stupid...

But I do feel like a humongous idiot. Really.

I can finally laugh about it, but please, supportive comments about your backing issues, only, please. : )