The longest first post to a blog ever, which is about a truck, and a trailer.

I wrote this for my COM 210 class and then rewrote it to post it here. I never actually shared it with them because I umm, didn't I guess. The class was called non-verbal communication and was about... You guessed it.

         When I was 16 I was driving my parents very nice 1994 Chevy Suburban. It was 8 years old at the time and was by far the newest car they had ever owned. I was driving it because my Bronco was in a state of massive disrepair. One day I borrowed the Suburban and my dad's trailers to pick up some parts for my Bronco. I was getting these parts from a junkyard my buddy worked at. We had big plans to make a whole day of it. Working in a junkyard together, diving into old trucks, and yanking the parts I needed to fix mine. It would have been a great day for two car nuts like us. Would have been except on the way dad's trailer broke. The rusty old U-bolts holding the axle onto the leaf spring had shorn off from decay. I noticed this had occurred when I looked out the passenger side mirror and saw that the trailer was skewed massively to the right side. Half behind my truck and half driving down the shoulder. It  looked like it was trying to pass me on the right. We limped it back to my buddies' place. Flipped it upside down and set about repairing it. After assessing the damage we went to Bob's house. Bob had just bought a new trailer for himself to replace his old rusty one. We kindly took his old one. Then using the axle from it, and new nuts and bolts from the hardware store, we turned two broken trailers into one working one. It wasn't until after dark that we finally had it done. 

        We loaded the rusted, disassembled, and scavenged from hulk of Bob's trailer onto my dad's trailer. As we drove to the junkyard I thought about how happy my dad would be when I brought his newly repaired trailer home to him. I had sacrificed all of the things I wanted to do that day in order to fix my dad's trailer for him. We arrived. I backed up to a pile of trash, hooked the hulk onto a piece of machinery using a tow strap, and drove away. As I did so Bob's trailer was pulled off of the good trailer. Then (stupidly) I backed up, forgetting I still had a trailer behind me, and jackknifed the trailer I had just repaired into the rear quarter panel of my parent's beautiful suburban. This left a football sized dent in my parent's truck. For the next 20 minutes I stood by this dent swearing at myself and my own stupidity while my buddy tried his hardest to console me. After I calmed myself down a bit I drove home as prepared as I could be to face my parent's wrath. It was late and they had both gone to bed. I decided it was better to see if they were still awake in bed rather than have one of them discover the damage the next morning. I crept up the stairs with dread in my stride and opened the door of their bedroom. My mom turned over and looked up at me obviously still very awake. "Mom" I said. "What did you do to the truck?" She asked. My jaw practically dropped. There was no possible way she could have seen the damage yet. "How did you know?" I asked, "Ohh no" she replied, "I was hoping I was wrong." I then told her the story and offered to help out as much as I could with repairing it. She told me we would look at it the next morning and I went to bed.

        This is a great example of my mother's non-verbal skills. From the way I had walked up the stairs and entered the room to the tone of my voice and the look in my eyes she had correctly assumed what had occurred that night. She also had a hint from the amount of time I was gone past what my errand should have required. It makes sense the more I think about it. Mothers spend a lot of time with their children and hear a lot of lies from them. They learn to interpret non-verbal cues and make assumptions based on common things their children do when they tell lies or try to reduce the severity of the truth.

        Funniest part of the whole story, they never fixed the dent. It remained firmly planted into the side of that truck for the rest of the time we owned it. A constant reminder to me of that day that should have been so good and all went horribly wrong because I was careless.

        Actually the best part is that the very trailer I spent that entire day fixing is now mine. My dad bought a replacement one and passed it onto my brother. Then my brother bought a replacent trailer and passed it onto me. So it sits, next to my house, ready for me to use it whenever I need a trailer. All because I spent a whole day fixing it rather than doing what I really wanted to be doing. I guess someday I'll get a new trailer and pass this one on to... my sister?