Because I watched Ugly Betty live last night, rather than DVR’ing it and watching it later, I actually had to sit through the television commercials (I know - perish the thought!). All I can say is…
I can not believe Wife Swap is still on!
But on to the real point of this entry (such as it is)...
Now, you all know that I love The Old Man dearly. He has many wonderful qualities and I enjoy his company immensely.
That said, let me just say that the man has an uncanny knack for making a 30 second story last, like, six minutes. He tends to go off on tangents; he tends to ramble; he tends to focus on completely insignificant details. Normally, I am quite patient with his penchant for going on and on…and on...trying to remember what color tie a customer was wearing when the color of the tie is not the point at all and what he is really trying to tell me is how Jimbo at work messed up the guy’s car. Sometimes I even find his long-winded-ness endearing. But sometimes…usually when I am tired or irritated about my day (or PMS’ing), I lose patience.
Last night, The Old Man was telling me about an older Alpha Romeo he worked on. As he told me the story about how the car’s owner made him go over every detail of each of his repairs (and believe me when I say that I heard every detail, also), why they were done and what result may be expected, he ended by saying: “And I gave him a can of octane booster.”
Me: “Is that the stuff you put in my car last week?”
Old Man: “No...you see, gas used to have significantly higher levels of octane…”
And he then proceeded to go in to a long discourse about what octane is for and chains of hydrogen and blah-blah-blah until, seriously, like five minutes had passed and my eyes were glazing over and if there had been a fork handy it would have ended up in the eye of at least one of us. I don’t even want to know what hydrogen chains are! Finally, I blurted out:
“So what you’re saying is that gas used to have higher octane levels.”
OM: “Uh-huh”
Me: And that his car was built back in the days when Supreme gas had like three times the amount of octane as it does now.
OM: “Uh-huh”
Me: So you gave him an octane booster, which will help with his engine performance.
OM: “Uh-huh”
See? Thirty seconds.
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