Monday, May 28, 2012

Naivety

Its probably my upbringing, or my doctrinal background.  I believe in "Total Depravity" in essence, such as we can't save ourselves from the bad things that we have committed.  But all-in-all I believe that most people are well intentioned.  Well on Friday that belief came to a crashing halt.

My beautiful fiancee and I were on our way to a wedding that was three hours away, we thought the wedding started at 7pm, so we figured we would bug out of town by 2:30 and give about an hour buffer.  Upon getting in the car and checking the wedding invitation we realized that it actually started at 6, and we realized we were about an hour behind.

We could make it, we were just going to have to push it pretty hard.  Getting about 20 minutes down the road I realize that my heat gauge was pushing the limits pretty hard, which made no sense because the day before I had topped it off with coolant. Regardless I hoped the problem would just go away.

Finally, the air was far too hot, and the gauge was off the charts, and I needed to pull off the highway. Glad I pulled off when I did, because literally at that time Amanda goes, "Uh, Nick, look at your feet." and smoke was rising up in my car and out of my hood.  I immediately pulled off the side of the road and we called up AAA.

As any of you know with AAA you sit on the side of the road waiting for quite some time, at this point it was about 3:00.  About 3:15 a car pulls up on the other side of the road and a guy gets out wearing a ratty t-shirt and is smoking a cigarette. He tells me that he's a mechanic.  I think, ok well this could work out.  He's giving me all these tips and what he thinks is wrong, he even gets my car to start back up and pulls it down the side of the road.  He's actually becoming my buddy.

He tells me that it looks like I'll need a water pump, all this while indicating that he's an honest guy and he just wants to help us out.  I think ok, great!  He says that his brother lives about 15 minutes down the road and just gutted a honda and has a water pump for sale for $40.  He needs to pay his brother and I give him the money.  He writes me out a receipt because he wants to do things the honest way.  Him and I exchange numbers and call each other on the spot to make sure that we have the numbers in our recent calls.

It's now 4:00, Amanda and I are sweating through our clothes, but help is on the way! We're a little worried that it might be awkward between AAA and this guy if they come meet us at the same time.  Either way we figure things will be fine.  All the sudden Amanda gets a call from AAA saying they are on their way, and I think "Oh man, I hope this guy gets back before AAA." So I call him up and he says, "Oh, I'm 15 minutes away, I'll be right there."

4:15 comes and goes, he's not back.
4:20, still nothing, and he's not answering his phone.
4:25
4:30
4:45 Still no sign of this guy, and he didn't answer about three of my calls.

I realize that I trusted this guy, gave him money, and he totally left me for stranded and had no intention of returning. I totally got conned.

Like I said, I think I'm too naive, and I trust people way more than I should, and it came back to bit me in the butt this time.

Thankfully I was only out 40 bucks.

Has anything like this ever happened to you before?

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