soapbox

I’m not sure that this is actually a joke. More of just a very funny event.

Since the house painting’s been going on, we’ve been parking on the street instead of in the driveway. More distance = less chance of paint on cars.

Today I left my car out on the street until after dinner and Kirsten decided that she should get some practice driving since she’s far from an expert with the manual.

We drove around, stalled a lot, and finally got to the point where starts on flat ground were not only stall-free but were also fairly smooth. The road to our house is both very rarely traveled and slightly uphill so it was a good place to continue the lesson. Stop, start, drive 10 feet, stop, repeat. Other than a lot of rolling backwards it was ok with very few stalls.

Now the funny part.

I didn’t notice, but some of the high-school and college age kids in the neighborhood were chatting in one of our neighbors yards. Kirsten noticed them and that, along with a car coming up the road behind us, flustered her enough that she stalled directly across from our house and decided to wait for the car to pass before she gave it another try. However, before she had the chance to start up again the neighbor girl walked up to the car.

(Side note: She just got home today from her second year at Georgetown or George Washington, I’m not sure which. She’s cute, blonde, tall, and has a tendency to have guys knocking on her bedroom window at 3 am.)

She turned to her brother and said “I’m going to go get in a car with strangers.” I’m sure that she was thinking that we were some friends in a new car who didn’t know where her house was and had therefore been stopping at every house. Kirsten was frantically trying to figure out how to lock the doors or yell at her not to get in the car. However, we weren’t able to express anything to her until she actually opened the back door of the car and started to get in.

“Oh, you really are strangers. Who are you?”

“We’re your neighbors.”

Shocked silence.

Then we pulled into our driveway, ran inside, and laughed our asses off.

I think it was much worse for her than it was for us.