Kick Him When He's Down

Once again, we needed milk. It only takes 15 minutes on average to drive to Safeway, buy the milk and make it back home. Ryan offered to take that quick trip to Safeway, while I finished the end of the day clean up.

Ryan got in our minivan, started it up and noticed one of the head lights was out. He drove it a block or two, but turned around. It's a holiday weekend, and surely there are "emphasis patrols" out and about.

He got into his truck and started it up. His truck, which hasn't sounded right for a couple of days now, sounded just awful. Ryan's description of the engine noise was, "rough" and "clanking." So, he hopped back in the minivan. Certainly he could make it.

Fast forward two minutes. Ryan is now in the Safeway parking with flashing lights parked next to him.

"Do you know why you were pulled over?"

"I have a good guess. How come?"

"Your headlight is out."

"Don't forget my front right turn signal. It's out too."

Ryan was given a warning for both lights, and was let to go buy milk. He got back into the van, pulled out of the parking lot and headed back up the hill to our house. That's when the OTHER headlight burned out. In front of another police car.

Enter the second set of flashing lights.

"Sir, do you know why you were pulled over?"

"Yep."

"Why did you turn off your headlights?"

"Well, uh... I didn't turn off the headlights. I had two headlights earlier today. The first burned out on the way to get milk for my kids. And I was pulled over not 10 minutes ago to tell me the fact. The second one burned out just now as I was driving home. The only thing that make this better would be for a chicken to hop out of my car and you could write me a ticket for poultry at large. I suggest you don't follow me home, because at the rate of deterioration, my back wheels are liable to fall off and hit you."

Ryan did make it home with my van in one piece. And he's scheduled to replace all those lights tomorrow after work.