The Stuck Shifter Gets The Zip-Ties

We were on our way to band practice; Nana and I were using my parents’ car on this particular night since hers was noisy and uninspected. My parents’ car wasn’t much better. We had a noisy exhaust leak and the shifter was held together by zip ties. During our drive, the right headlight finally went out after a few days of it flickering, and the exhaust only got louder as we pushed forward.

I hadn’t been in the band long… a few weeks maybe? Jason’s house was in the middle of the boondocks and the early darkness made finding it even worse. It was the transition between Winter and Fall and the roads were icy. We turned onto his road and began creeping up the hill.

” Do you remember which one it is?” Nana asked.

“It’s on the left, but not for a while.”

We drove slowly for a few minutes until we thought we saw it. On the left was a dirt road with a bright marker at the end. That was it, right? I remembered a short dirt road and a bright marker, but something didn’t feel right. “Is it the first one?” I thought out loud.

“I’m not sure.”

There were no other cars around, so Nana stopped the car where we were to look at the road.

“No, it’s further up.”

After the first dirt road with the marker was a dirt driveway with a marked mailbox.

“I think that’s it-” I began to say as Nana sped by.

It was definitely it.

“Oh, sh–,” she cursed and looked for a place to turn around.

There was a driveway further up on the right that seemed safe enough to turn around in. We pulled into the driveway and Nana shifted into reverse. But she didn’t. On the way to reverse, the shifter stopped on neutral and stayed there.

“Uh oh,” we acknowledged the situation.

We tampered with the shifter, pushing and pulling it, just trying to get it to move from neutral. A light shined in the window from the house in front of us. Double uh oh. We saw movement and knew that someone was about to walk out and ask us what we were doing in their driveway. An older couple stepped out of their house and made it to my passenger side door in a minute or two. They were very nervous, yet aggressive and obviously just wanted us off of their property. I won’t include dialogue for this conversation as it was rather boring. But the woman asked us why we were in her driveway and we told her that we meant to turn around but got stuck. The man kept telling us what to do with the car but didn’t seem to understand that we couldn’t move our shifter.

“Could you at least move the car out of our driveway?” the woman asked.

“We would if our shifter worked,” I replied blandly.

We’d been over this several times.

“Well I guess you’re just going to have to get out and push,” the husband replied threateningly.

That wasn’t going to happen. A kid with chronic pain and an elderly woman with half a pancreas weren’t going to make it very far pushing an SUV through a snowy, dirt driveway.

“No, we’re okay,” my Nana snorted; She wasn’t happy.

“I’m gonna’ call my dad,”

“Or we can call you a tow truck, ” the man suggested.

We couldn’t afford a tow truck. My dad could at least zip tie the shifter back together, but it would probably take him a half an hour to get to us, as well as another twenty minutes to temporarily fix the car. The elderly couple didn’t seem to have enough patience for us to even have been in their driveway for the last five minutes.

“My dad can fix the shifter, we just have to wait for him to get here,” I explained.

“Well, how long will that be? We want you out of our driveway.”

“Probably about half an hour.”

“Well, if your car isn’t out of our driveway in a half an hour, we’re calling the police to help move it along.”

And with that, the elderly couple marched back up the driveway and into the house. I called my dad and he agreed to come and help us out. I could hear him snorting over the line, and couldn’t help but giggle along with him. Of course, this was our luck! The wait felt much longer than it actually was. The elderly couple peeked out the windows at us every once in a while, and Nana and I spent the time cracking jokes at their expense. It was cold, so we turned the heat up as much as it could go and huddled close inside the car.

I checked my phone and realized that I had six missed calls! All of them were from Jason. We were forty-five minutes late and counting, and we were only right down the road! I called him back and quickly explained to him what had happened. He wasn’t surprised. He knew we were both bad with directions and had to laugh at our combined bad luck. After talking to Jason, I called my dad back and let him know that I’d walk to Jason’s house and Nana would stay with the car. I used my phone flashlight and made my way up the road to the dirt driveway, down the long driveway, and into the house. By the time I got inside, I was freezing. The guys were all there practicing and had to laugh when I came in through the door, red-nosed and out of breath, holding an acoustic guitar. I sat by the heater and warmed up, tuning my guitar and laughing with the guys about my bad luck.

A while later, Nana and my parents came in, just about as frozen and breathless as I was. The car was fixed, for now, zip-tied back together and alright to go home with, as long as we didn’t try to go into reverse again. My parents had arrived in Nana’s car, uninspected and loud, but apparently, working a lot better than theirs at the time. Luckily, they hadn’t been stopped or bothered for the sticker. They hung around a while, joking about our luck with cars and the trials and tribulations of both of our travels. My parents went home and Nana and I stayed for the rest of the practice. If only we hadn’t missed the turn, we wouldn’t have been stuck and an hour late! No one was seriously upset or stressed. We took the incident with a grain of salt and laughed it off good-naturedly. Although it wasn’t the best scenario, that night gave us a funny story to tell, and a funny memory to think back on for years to come.

On our way home, Nana and I listened carefully to the car, cautious of the different noises and movements within the vehicle. We made it home alright in the end, and all was well. If we hadn’t laughed that night off, we might have been miserable out in the cold. Luckily, we both have a sense of humor!

Photo by Photos By Clark on Foter.com / CC BY-NC