Why Every Woman Needs Six Strapping Men

I have a tendency to get myself into interesting situations. My mother is never shocked when I start a sentence with, “Well, you see, what happened was. . .” The man that I drug and convince to call me his girlfriend or better yet, marry me, will also have his job cut out for him in helping me get out of these “interesting situations.”  I promise sir, if you are reading this, that we will lead a very comical life.

And a recent rainy night  proved that outside of a signature black dress, good credit and a great stylist, why every women needs six strapping men in her life.

I’m talking Paul Bunyan strapping.

I just bought a brand new car. In fact, it is the first car I have ever purchased. Outside of higher education, it is the biggest purchase I’ve ever made. I’ve been watching it like a hawk; strategically parallel parking, giving the “this is a new car so don’t you dare tap it or I’ll cut you” look to parallel parkers. A leaf in my windshield wiper irritates me. It’s my baby.

So you can image what the sound of a concrete block scrapping the passenger rear door would do to me.

Granted it was all my doing, a parallel parking job gone wrong (and no, it’s not my lack of skill in this department, I’m a stellar parallel parker), a concrete block attached to a pole, extending a foot away from the curb that I didn’t see (because why would there be a concrete block extending in a parking spot?!).

Accessing the situation proved that I was indeed up shit creek without a paddle, and more strategic pulling forward and backward proved so detrimental that what ended up was a scenario I couldn’t pay a skilled professional to recreate. If I could have fit my wallet between this concrete block and my new car that would have been a liberal estimation.

I pride myself in staying calm in serious situations. If I could handle blood, I’d probably do well in the ER. I also pride myself in being logical and moving my emotions aside. But this was a brand new car with only one car payment against it.

I needed some strong men and I needed a lot of them. Immediately.

Problem is, I don’t know six strong men. In fact I ran through my phone to even find one man that I could call and the only person I could think of probably wasn’t the best person to call  . . . on his birthday.

“I need lots of dudes,” I said.

“No, you need a tow.”

The southern gal in me who knew that I could round up six strong men in Louisiana and get this done pronto and then have a tailgate party and bonfire after was deflated. And I wasn’t convinced a tow truck would be able to jack lift my car and move it over.

Shit creek was rising high.

An hour and two phone calls later a tow truck was on it’s way. At this point my fight and flight response had evened out to the point that my emotions could finally kick in. When I didn’t have the opportunity to freak out earlier, now I had time to reflect on what I just did, the familiar scraping sound of concrete on unblemished paint returning to haunt me, my new car pushed against a wall with nowhere to go; dollar signs of repairs flashing in front of me.

As the few tears welled up in my eyes I wasn’t sure if they were tears of pain for my baby facing a close cosmetic death, tears of the sound of a cash register draining my already empty account, or the fact that I was doing this all alone, sans a man to “fix it.”  Not that I needed a man to logistically solve it; I can and did do exactly what a man would have done in that situation — called the tow truck. But, emotionally, I needed a man to lean on. I’m a strong, independent and capable woman, a bad ass bitch if you will, but at the end of the day, there is a part of me that is sometimes tired of doing it on my own; that needs the emotional support of a partner, someone to help, someone to take the reins when I just can’t deal.

Had I had six strapping men in my life, however, it would’ve been a heck of a party.

PS. Car made it out alive with only minor wreckage that has since been repaired. Tony, the tow guy, and my knight in shining armor, was awarded a huge hug that probably lasted a little too long for social norms. I hope my aggressive hugging made his night.