A little story

This little story is called "Listen to Your Wife." Once upon a time a family of three was traveling down to St. George for Memorial Day weekend. Their car had been experiencing troubles, despite their having forked over the better part of a thousand dollars to fix it just a week earlier. The problem was that one of spark plug boots (the rubber-like silicone thingy that covers the spark plugs) kept popping out, thereby reducing the little Honda Civic from a V4 to like a V0.3.

From Salt Lake to Provo, the thing popped out three times, forcing Nate to mutter mild expletives, pull over, and cram the boot back down in its hole. The family finally made it to Provo, and on their way to pick up a friend, Michelle said gently, "Hey, that Sinclair station has an auto shop and it looks pretty empty," to which Nate only grunted menacingly. She continued, "Maybe we should stop and have them check it out." At this point, Nate was thinking, "I am NOT going to pay a hundred more dollars for this piece of junk car, and we are NOT putting that car in so they can keep it overnight and we're stuck here in Happy Valley." But he merely said, "I don't think so."

Now, Nate knew Michelle is generally sensitive to other people's feelings, and she doesn't like to step on toes, and she surely recognizes when her husband is a grumpy monkey. So he figured the discussion was over.

Instead, she insisted. "No, we're going to turn around and ask them if they can look at it." With murmuring that would put Laman and Lemuel to shame, Nate spun the car around and waited impatiently as Michelle went in to talk to the mechanic, who was surely calculating how to weasel some major cash out of the family. Michelle came back out and beckoned for Nate to pull into the first bay. A greasy young man came out and signalled to pop the hood. And he went to work. Nate and Michelle hovered over. About 5 seconds later, the mechanic said, "Oh, the problem is this [insert technical term here] on the end of the spark plug boot. See how it's poking out?" He pushed it inside the hollow boot, then proceeded to do the same with the other boots. "That oughta fix your problem." When asked how much they owed him, he said, "Nah, I didn't have anything to do anyway. Won't cost you anything."

As the little family continued on down the road, never to have car troubles the rest of the trip, Michelle didn't even gloat, although she did make Nate treat her to a milkshake. And they lived happily ever after.