Stupid vehicle moment #2

Yesterdays post about the motorhome led to reading about a friend's daughter's experience with blinker fluid. It felt good to know I wasn't alone in the vehicular-challenged department. (And if you don't get the blinker fluid part, then you can join our club. There is no club yet, but you could be the president. We'll be awesome.)

It reminded me of another time, in a galaxy far far away. Down on main street that is, but it was a different world then. Dh and I at that time were just newly dating. He had a truck; a Chev S-10, with bucket seats and jump seats behind them. A nice two tone. It was his first major purchase and I gotta tell ya, it was nice to have a boyfriend with a vehicle. My ex didn't even bother to learn to drive. As impressed as I was with my new man, my dad was even more impressed. I think now he was just really glad I had finally dumped the last guy. Anyone was going to be an improvement at that time. But I digress.

I'll never know if it was the truck, or maybe a bit of nervousness on his part, but sometimes when shifting gears (it was a stick-shift) there would be a grinding noise as he tried to move from one gear into the next.

Everytime he'd say "Better get those rubber gears soon".

I laughed the first few times. Then I'd kinda giggle. Then just a sort of "heh heh"; the joke was wearing out.

Then just one more time, one more gear grinding, and with my sister in the back seat, he says it again. "Gotta get those rubber gears."

He caught me. I say "Do they really make rubber gears?" All innocent and naive am I.

My sister who was about 14 at the time burst out laughing. Even she new it was a joke. What else could I say? He'd repeated it so many times I just finally figured that his gears were wearing out and he really was going to upgrade to rubber ones.

He never said it again.

But my sister would talk about it for years.