Hey! How How High is This Thing Supposed to Jump??

Every job is stressful. It doesn't matter if you have to run reports by the fifteenth or if you just have to make it to work in time to start the coffee pot before your meanie head boss gets there. For me, it got real during the end of instruction tests. It doesnt matter what job you have, you get stressed and you have to find ways to cope. 

Glass of wine?

Long run?

Calling a friend to gripe?

Leaving your headlights on in your car so your battery dies before four o'clock when it's time to leave..? 

Unconventional I know, but apparently that's how my mom would..uhh...settle her nerves? 

Anyway, you could count on my mom's car battery needing to get "jumped" once a week. 

Sometimes a friend would help her out, especially if my dad who worked out of town was going to be late. Other times though, we would wait for my dad at the school. I would work on homework or watch a movie while my mom graded the perpetual stack of papers that all teachers have....there was one particular time that I remember the latter senario happening.

The First Time. 

Dad showed up. We packed up. We all went outside to the elementary school parking lot where mom's car was like the Lone Ranger in one of those John Wayne westerns. There was probably a tumble weed rolling in front of us as we walked out the double doors to see the ONLY car left out there. 

Of course it was the ONLY car out there. I had been waiting forever. All my homework was done and I had made it through almost an entire game of Oregon Trail....which took at least 45 whole minutes. (I'm trying to approximate it now in my big-kid brain because in my little-kid brain it was the longest game ever. With Mary getting dysentery and someone stealing all your supplies and THEN running out of food before the winter was over, it was a long and stressful game!)

So, (finally) we get out to the car. Dad's truck was already parked right up next to  mom's LeSabre...okay probably not a LeSabre but I can't remember...Anyway, dad was pulling out the jumper cables and I was watching him like a hawk. 

As a part of my "daddy's girl" responsibilities I had to be completely in his way, all up in his business, and ask him at least twenty-five questions..a minute. 

He hooked up the clamps on his truck and started it. He popped the hood on mom' car and attached the other end of the cables. My dad then explained to me more about the process of "jumping" a car to stop my questions before they arose. 

However....I was SO not listening. I was running around the car and hopping into the passenger seat of the car and buckling up and I was doing it all fast! I grabbed onto the door handle with my right hand and the shifter with my left. This was intense. My knuckles started to get white as I gripped my makeshift handles just as tightly as I could for a few more minutes. I was wishing more than anything that I had my bicycle helmet with me. Had I known, I definitely would have grabbed my bicycle helmet! 

I waited. 

My joints were starting to get sore. 

I waited more. 

The anticipation was killing me! 

I waaaaaaiiiiiittttteeed more!

I couldn't take it anymore. 

I opened the door. I leaned my head out just as far as I thought was safe given the risky circumstances and hollered, "Hey!! How high is this thing supposed to jump?? Did I miss it?"

After some chuckling under their breath, one of my parents started my mom's now "jumped" car much to my dissapointment I found out later that I didn't miss it. The once in a lifetime car-jumping experience I thought I was privy to was really as mundane as watching a baby dirty a diaper. 

Lesson learned: Never take thinks for face value 

 

Or: Don't trust your parents

Or: Don't ever get excited about anything because you will always be diassapointed. 

Whatever you take from this please note that "jumping" a car is really not that exciting and if you haven't witnessed it because you have a fancy car with fancy automatic shut off lights....you aren't missing anything and you definitely don't need a bicycle helmet! 

(This is how I wish I would have looked that fateful day that I learned to not trust anything that I hear.)

This isn't me...in case you were confused. If it makes it better, I didn't grab this kid off the internet. I know him in real life.