I think Thursday must be my favorite day. I tend to start many stories on Thursday. I used to get a burst of energy every Thursday night and clean my house. Maybe it is because I know the end of the week is coming soon. For whatever reason, I’ve always liked Thursdays. Until last week.

It started out as a normal Thursday, I had Ted and Gemma with me. We were going to venture out of the house, into the blazing heat of the Arizona summer and do some errands. I actually had to get the emissions tested on my car. I have not done that in…25 years? I don’t know. I can’t remember the last time I did it but I’m pretty sure I had tiny kids at the time. My current car is my favorite and I’m in denial about it getting older. It’s sporting around 71K miles and I’m not sure how that happened. I mean, I just bought it, brand new….a few years ago? Okay, it was about 5 years ago, but again, I’m not sure how that happened either.

I was driving down the freeway with the kids. They were doing their best to push the limits on Rule number 1: Do not distract the driver. I was trying not to be too critical of their constant giggling and occasional yelling. Kids will be kids, right? Anyway, I was a bit on edge. Both hands were gripping the steering wheel as we got off at the exit my Google search told me I needed to take to get to the emission testing place.

I hadn’t gotten to the first stoplight when I was attacked by a bird. Okay, I wasn’t personally attacked, I guess I should say my car was attacked, but I took it personally. The dang bird flew right into my driver side window with a very loud “whampck”. If you have ever been hit by a bird, you know that is exactly how it sounds. I’m not sure how the bird managed to get so low into the traffic surrounding me, but it successfully scared the crap out of me. If my hands hadn’t both been on the wheel and if I hadn’t been trying to hard to consentrate on driving to avoid being ‘distracted by the passengers’, I just might have swerved into the cars around me.

One point to the crazy kids in the back.

When I finally got the the emissions place (remember, I said I went where my google search sent me), I had to follow signs to the back of the building to find….nothing resembling testing. A BIG friendly looking police man sauntered over to my window to give me aid.

“We don’t do emissions here. Go back to Greenfield, turn left, go two miles. You can’t miss it.”

Okay stop right there. First of all, NEVER tell me “you can’t miss it” because I most certainly can and most likely WILL miss it!

I wanted clarification (see above) so I nicely asked the officer if I would end up on the other side of the freeway. He looked at me and repeated exactly what he had said before.

This began a small battle of wills I’m afraid. I repeated MY question, with a little more ‘umph’ in it.

He repeated his, with a little bit of a….condescending tone added.

I repeated my question slowly and louder and asked if he could JUST answer the question?!

“Yes.”

Seriously. You’d think I was asking him for his social security question or the password to his Roblox account.

Fast forward past the stop to feed the back seat creatures and we are turning left on Greenfield.

We pass the freeway. We reach the 2 mile mark. We reach the 3 mile mark. We are now at 4 miles. This is where I pull over and ask the real hero of the story, my dad. One call to my dad and he can tell me exactly where the emissions place is, and he doesn’t even have the nasty tone to his voice.

It was seven miles.

The lesson here is, Thursdays are not always my favorite day, I respect most policemen for what they do, but my real hero is my dad. And, every kid likes Canes chicken.

Cause I said so.

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