You ever have a story that wasn’t funny at the time that the events happened, but it’s funny now? This is one of those stories. March 16th was when our governor started shutting down stores and restaurants. At the time, we didn’t know what was going to open, if we were going to be able to get food or if the pet store was going to stay open.
We ducked out of work early that evening and did a massive shopping trip. We did our usual Target run then the pet store then Fresh Thyme. Target was pretty bare as far as food goes, but we did get what we needed there, except toilet paper of course. Everyone was panicked and scared at that point. There was a lady directing people traffic to the self-check out and she was also checking what people had in their carts. There were limits to how much of certain items you could buy. So if someone had 3 bottles of soap, the lady had to take 2 away from them. I wouldn’t want that job. She called us up to the check out and we scanned our things and paid. At this time, we were still allowed to bring reusable bags so packed everything up and headed to the pet store. The pet store wasn’t too bad. We got the giant bag of food and chewies for Zollie. That brought us up to 3 full bags of food for her. Next was Fresh Thyme. It was crazy in there. Lots of people everywhere and lots of empty shelves. We did get everything we needed, except toilet paper. Actually, we got more than what we needed. We stocked up on things like mac and cheese, pasta and sauce, diced tomatoes, chick peas (those are a staple in our house), pizza sauce, granola, snacks, and other pantry items. I had to reorganize our pantry to get everything to fit.
Next stop was the beer distributor. This is where the story gets good. We drove over to the drive through beer distributor and the car line was backed up to the road. There were no legal parking spaces to be found. I parked on the side of the property toward the exit. I’ve never seen a beer distributor so full before. J went in and I sat in the car with the car turned off, but left the music on. As I was waiting for him, I was texting with my friend Adrienne. We were planning to go to Las Vegas for her birthday that weekend and we were both debating on whether it was a good idea to go or not. As we were texting, she decided to cancel the trip.
Between texting her, I was watching the people come out of the store. It was an amazing sight, to say the least. I saw at least 10 people walk out of the store with multiple cases of beer on dollies. Gotta prepare for the apocalypse, right.? After about a half hour, J come back to the car with two cases of beer. He asked me to unlock the truck and I pressed the button to do so and it wouldn’t unlock. Then everything on my dashboard flashed and my car died. Great. The apocalypse is upon us, the car is dead, and we’re stuck at the beer distributer illegally parked. Could this get any better?
J ran off to call for help as I sat fuming in the car. J saw the guy he was standing in line with walk out and his car was near ours. J asked him if he could help and jump the car. He did and there was some issue with keeping the jumper cables attached to my battery. They tried for a while and it didn’t work. The guy left and J called his sister Meagan. She was also having some car issues her car and it was in the shop, so she had her parent’s car. Once she got there, she pulled around and popped the hood open.
Apparently fancy cars have fancy batteries in hard to reach spots. And neither of them could find where the battery was located. So, Meagan called her friend who happened to be in the area. He stopped by and also tried to jump my car. He found that my battery was corroded and went looking for some Coke to pour on it to get the corrosion off. While he was trying to procure the Coke, two college aged kids stopped by and asked if we needed a jump. We said yes and he pulled out one of those battery jumper boxes, hooked it up to my battery, turned the car on, and it started. Hurray! J told me to give that man a hug and the guy was like “uh no hugs, but we can elbow bump.” Fair enough since at that time this virus could live on everything and jump quickly from person to person. We elbow bumped and away we all went. There are good people in the world, even during the start of the apocalypse.
Thanks for reading this segment of my “This Damn Virus” story. Catch up on past segments here and come back next Wednesday for more!
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