Clareified

He is on the telephone, but waves me in. He covers the mouthpiece, points to his chair and mouths “sit, sit.”
I do.
“No, ma’am. Look, as I explained to you before…hello…hello?” He hangs up the receiver and leans back in his chair.
“Can you fucking believe that, Dawnie? BITCH hung up on me. Sorry for my language, babe. But oooh, I HATE THAT! Only one person can hang up on me and that’s because she’s my wife. Can you believe that. UGH. I just want to….and she’s so stupid too, I have her car. In my hands. And she hangs up on me?”
I smile politely. He is about to have my car in his hands, this is no time to share my views about men who can’t handle getting hung up on.
Waa, my vagina hurts.
I’ve been sitting across from Eddie, at the Honda dealership for about eight years now. He knows me by name. So much so, he feels comfortable calling me Dawnie and patting me on the back whenever I leave. And why not, since seeing Eddie always costs me at least a grand, I’d say I’ve earned the favored customer status.
Eddie is a talker. His agitated state just worsens this natural proclivity. He is explaining to me how this woman keeps bringing her tire pressure gauge to the dealership to get it repaired even though it was made by Chrysler.
“I even pointed her to a sign that said “Honda” and slowly pronounced it for her…HOOONNNNNDDAAAAAAHHHH. Not. CHHHRRRRYYYYSSSSSLLLLLEEEEERR.” He adds some Spanish words I recognize, but will not repeat.
“Ah, but enough about esa puta(okay, I lied)…let me see here…what did we do for you…ahh…we had to flush your fuel injectors and replace your throttle something something.”
I smile and nod, the imaginary cash register in my head quickly dinging up to a thousand dollars.
“Do you know what that is?”
“Um…no.”
He explains to me something about gas efficiency and mileage and then he says something which has been nagging at me ever since.
“Do you know that gas as a liquid won’t burn?”
Eyebrow raise.
“Yeah, it only burns as a vapor. Look it, you light a match and plop it into a bucket of gasoline. Pst. Nothing, it goes out. Now, if you hold it over the bucket too long, KABOOM!”
He leans back in his chair excitedly showing me how it would go down if I dropped the match too slowly. Although, he leaves out the writhing in pain on the floor, ambulance ride and weeks long lecture from my mom questioning my non retardation.
And yet…I remain fascinated. I have spent the better part of my day since I left his office telling myself I will NOT, under ANY circumstances, try this experiment.
No.
Bad Dawn.
Bad Dawn with no eyebrows.
Okay.
Eddie tells me they repaired my broken CD changer again.
“No charge!” He says, as if the thousand bucks I paid to have them fix it last December was bygones.
Who likes warranties? Me do.
He tallied up all my services and presents me with a bill for $820.
He hands me the “free car wash” coupon that I get with every visit to his office.
“Ahh,” he says suddenly “take another one.” He slides the white paper across his desk.
Sweet. A hundred and eighty dollars less than I expected and an extra five dollar car wash. Not too shabby for Dawn.

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 1:53 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.