Stranded

I like to save things up for when I might need them.  I’m so bad about this that even when I need the things I’ve been saving, I don’t use them in case I might need them even MORE at a later date.

Teresa always steals my good markers and pens.  I hate having crappy pens.  Last month the company sent me a “one year” package which included a really nice pen.  It’s still in the box.  I know it’s there if I need it but I don’t want to start using it because I’ll use it up…  Meanwhile I’m using a crappy pen I don’t like just so I don’t use up the good one in reserve.  I also have another really nice handmade pen but that one stays with one particular notebook and I can’t use it on anything but that notebook…  I have such strange habits…

Anyway, this actually comes to a point.  My hoarding things and never using them isn’t limited to material things.
The other night we got stranded.  The car had been acting peculiar in the last week or so and I knew it was time to do some maintenance on it.  But before I took it apart, it left us stranded in a bowling alley parking lot at 11:30 on a Saturday night.  I know many people but there is a short list of people I would call at 11:30 at night.  Anyone on that list would have happily come and rescued us but I didn’t want to make the call.  I was afraid of bothering my friends that late at night.  After half an hour of screwing around I went inside to tell the manager of the place I was going to leave the car in their parking lot until morning.  I was getting ready to call a cab when Teresa told me that she called Thom while I was inside and he was on his way.

I hated to bother him on a “non emergency”.  No one was hurt, I didn’t need bail money…  I’m a grown adult I should have called a tow-truck or a taxi and dealt with my problems on my own without having to bother my friends.  Of course, when Thom showed up he said he would have been insulted if I hadn’t called and I’m sure there’s a few of you reading this right now that would have felt the same way.

I’m not the score-keeper type.  Buying lunch, doing favors, money, sex…  I never keep track of things and worry about the zerosum.  When I have it (be it money, time, whatever) you’re free to take it.  But when I don’t have it and I need help, I always feel like I’m upsidedown on the equation and I hate to go further into some imaginary debt.  I know that’s not how my friends work either but I somehow get all upset about asking for help.  Teresa is losing her mind right now because even though she’s not the score-keeper type either, the few times she’s asked for something, she’s been having trouble getting any response out of someone she’s helped innumerable times.  I can understand her frustration but I’m trying to tell her to expect less from people…

But the truck breaking down turned out to be a good thing.  Thom told me to come over on Sunday and we’d work on the truck.  This means I couldn’t get dragged to Teresa’s Girl Scout event on Sunday (the bowling thing on Saturday was ALSO a Girl Scout event…)  It seems that because Teresa signed up for all this stuff and is now busy 100% of the time, it makes me busy 90% of the time even though I never signed up for anything…  Anyway, Thom and I spent the day messing around with the truck.  It turned out to be a simple fix but we decided to do some routine maintenance just to hang out and catch up, something I never would have had the time to do if the car hadn’t broken down.