Last night I asked a couple of my friends (my burley man friends, as I like to call them) to help me move my big stuff-- bookshelf, desk, dresser-- to my new house. My friend Jeff brought his truck, and we loaded everything in there without any problem. The problem came when we went to journey from existing house to new house: the truck, with all the stuff in it, didn't make it up the first hill. (I was driving ahead of the truck, and all of the sudden it wasn't in my rear-view mirror anymore. I kept waiting for a movie-esque moment where you see the car come above the horizon, dust trailing behind as the sun cooly sets in the background. That didn't happen)
I went back to see what was going on and the boys were stopped on the side of the road. Jeff said that he dropped the battery when coming up to lawrence, so he was pretty sure that it was the cause of the problem. We first tried to jump the battery with a little mini-starter Nick (my other burley man friend) had, but remembered that he used this week and forgot to charge it. No good. Then we tried to find jumper cables. I didn't have any; neither did Jeff or Nick. I called my roommate (since we were only 3 blocks from my house), no go. My boss lives close to where we were, so I tried going to his house to see if he had jumper cables. Not home. Jeff's dad was in town, so he came over, then went to someone's house, found jumper cables. Woo hoo! Actually, not. After playing with jumper cables for at least 15 minutes, we're still stranded.
Jeff's dad then comes up with a plan: call AAA, get the truck towed to Jeff's Uncle's shop, pick up Jeff's grandpa's truck, and then move the stuff to my place then. Okay, sounds goods. Jeff's aunt had already started calling AAA under her account, but since I remembered that I have AAA also, and you must be present to redeem AAA, I told her to switch to my card. She and Jeff's Dad were late for a dinner, so we told them to go and we could take care of it from there. I told AAA my membership number, and they told me that my account had expired. WHAT? I was transferred 3 times before they told me that we had simply failed to renew. Next phone call: an angry one to my parents. And oh yeah, did I mention that I took a 6 hour practice test for the bar and am only 11 days away from the actual test at this point?
Apparently my mom HAD renewed our AAA membership...or was in the process. I did technically expire in June, but they told my mom we would be fine until July 31 (yesterday was the 18th...). She had sent the first part of the membership fee in in June, and sent the second part (to make the complete membership fee) in just on TUESDAY. Well, apparently they hadn't processed it yet. So, my mom called in, and 15 minutes later, my membership was renewed. In the mean time, Jeff had called his mom, got her membership number, initiated the AAA process (which often takes a while) with her membership, while Nick went to the place where his parents/ aunt were having dinner to get her AAA card for when the people came to get us.
Finally 1/2 an hour later, the tow truck came and we executed the plan as anticipated. My friends Adam and Jody even showed up with their truck so that we only had to make one trip from the tow place to my new place.
My friends are the best. They stuck with me through the whole thing, kept me calm, and came to my rescue. They selflessly gave and asked nothing in return. I often feel I don't do a good job of doing the same thing for them, but hopefully the next time they need me, I can remember this situation and jump all over the chance to pay it forward.
