May 25, 2019

Adulthood - where some days it's nothing but aggravation and unexpectedly shelling out money

That title?  It is the lesson Man-Child has learned in spades in the past few weeks.

He had his oil changed and the car people so "helpfully" informed him that he needs four tires and that his shocks need changing to the tune of way more money than he has to spend.  "Why were they even looking at those things?  I just wanted to have my oil changed!" he fumed.

His father calmed him down by saying the shocks could wait and so could three of those tires - but he needed to replace the one immediately.  Has he done so, as of today?  That would be no.

Then he went to change the registration from us to him.  His dad did something wrong when transferring the title, so they told him he had to fill out another form, have it notarized and come back, which he did.  Only to be told that he was missing the "explanation" for what had happened; this despite the fact that what happened was clearly evident in the paperwork that he did have.  The upshot?  The Husband has to write up an explanation of what he did wrong; have it notarized and then Man-Child has to go back to the DMV; totally aggravating.

After he called his dad and vented to him; he called me to vent to me.  Which is when I relayed what happened when we first moved here.  The DMV spelled The Husband's first name wrong.  Well, technically, it's a name that can be spelled both ways but the version they went with does not match his birth certificate.  When he pointed out the error, he was told - and I quote - "It would be easier for you to go to the courthouse and have your name legally changed."

As an aside, can I tell you the absolute grief this has caused at various times for the past twenty two years?

And then, this morning - The Husband received a call from Man-Child.  His car key snapped off the fob.  His only key.

Another tidbit about this particular key - it's already been broken once before in the past two years or so.  Heads up Honda; you might want to take a critical look at the design of your keys.

I drove out to his place to pick him and the pieces up, as it were, to take him to the dealership.  Where the first guy we spoke to informed us that we would have to have the car towed to the dealership to have this dealt with; luckily, the older guy was within earshot and was able to help us come up with a solution - to the tune of $60.  Which was WAY better than towing the car and having to spend however many gazillions of dollars to fix the key only for them to tell us that, oh by the way, his whatzit is bad and needs to be replaced and also the widget has died.

Around about this point, I looked at Man-Child and said, "This is adulthood.  Aggravation.  But you can't let it ruin your day.  Besides, be glad that key broke today; if it had snapped tomorrow, you would have been out of luck as they would have been closed."  He agreed and we went to lunch at one of his favorite places.

When I asked him how he planned to spend his afternoon, he told me that it wouldn't include driving the car; because he just knew that all four tires would explode.  Fair point.  Some days, it does seem like that.

Now, hopefully, he'll get that one tire changed before he has to call me from the side of the road...

4 comments:

  1. Good grief! What a hassle! Lad just got home from college and admitted to me that he accidentally packed the piece he needed to dismantle his bed-frame in his storage unit and had to go back to the storage unit and figure out which bin held the piece he needed. This was more human error than what you described, but sometimes things just don't go your way. In Lad's case, I am hoping that he started to pay closer attention to details. Part of me thinks it is good that he goes to school on the east coast, because he has to do some problem solving on his own.

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  2. Oh my! I cannot believe the DMV's response to THEIR error. Sometimes you just can't make this stuff up. Glad, however, that the key problem has been dealt with. I hope anyway. :-)

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  3. Some days it just rains problems down on you. He's learning, it's part of life and you really can't let it ruin your day. Deep breaths. ;)
    The Coach's mom spelled his name wrong on his BC and it's sometimes an issue. ----effery or -effrey? Even I forget which is correct!

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  4. Oh this made me smile (although I feel your sons' pain). But we've had similar discussions with our older sons ... adulting is hard, you know?

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