For over a week I’ve been trying to coordinate a time to meet my parents in Hinkley (half way between Two Harbors & the Cities) to give them my car.  We’ve decided  to refurbish it, since we can get a good price from a guy we know.  Dad’s schedule is all over the place and we never know when he’ll get called in to work.

Finally, we decide to do it Sunday morning and my boyfriend agrees to drive my sister’s car to Hinkley,  so I can drive mine, and my mom can bring it back to Two Harbors.  We plan to leave at 8:30 am since my dad is scheduled to work around 1:00.

Just before we are about to leave, dad calls and says, “I just got called in to work at 10:30.  We’re still half an hour out of Hinkley.  Not sure if we should turn around,” he mutters, more to himself than to me,  “We might make it, but we’d be cutting it close. “  By this point I’m exasperated because the plan has changed a million times and I say, “Well can you figure it out so I know if we should leave or not?”

“I’ll call you back,”  he says and hangs up on me.

Five minutes later dad calls and says, “We just stopped at a rest stop and begged some lady to give mom a ride. “”What!?”  I exclaim incredulously.  “Ya, she’ll probably be there in about half an hour.  It’s back on.”  I die laughing,

“You can’t just pawn mom off on the first stranger you see!” I exclaim in disbelief.

  Just when I was losing all hope of having new material for my blog, they swoop in and save the day.

When we get to Hinkley, we meet mom at the Grand Casino buffet and she says, “The lady who gave me a ride was a nun!  Of course I didn’t know at first because she wasn’t…dressed.”  “What!”  I say.  “Ya!  Your father and I had just been talking about this friend of mine whose relative picked up a couple about ten years back and they murdered him! Not even  fifteen minutes later your father gets this call and tells me we’ll have to find someone to pick me up!”

She looks at me mouth agape and continues, “He just wanted to leave me with someone and I told him there was no way I was going to ask someone to bring me to Hinkley.  Well, we pull into the rest stop and there are these shady looking cars in the parking lot.  We see one decent-looking vehicle and I head straight to the bathroom looking for the owner. I  spot the only woman in the place, race up to her as she exits the restroom, and ask her if she’s going to the cities. Naturally she looks terrified.”

“Well, ya,” I say, “You cornered her in the bathroom!”

“Ya,” mom agrees, pausing to rip off the skin off her fried chicken and shove a piece in her mouth, “If I were her, I’m not sure I’d give me a ride.”

“Apparently she didn’t see your sweatshirt,”  I say laughing. “I’m sure that would have put her at ease.”  Mom looks down at her navy blue sweatshirt  and laughs.  It has three dogs sewn on the front with jingle bells around their necks, glittery halos above their heads and has the words, To err is human, to forgive is canine stitched across the front.  She hardly looks like an ax murderer, but one can never be too careful.