It was Corrine’s day off. She’d taken out her teeth to soak them, rolled up her hair in pink foam rollers, and was doing some housework in her underwear and an old tee-shirt. When she finished cleaning, she went into the bathroom and covered her face with a bright blue facial mask. Then, she looked out the window and saw that it was beginning to rain.
She knew her cat would be waiting just outside the front door to come in, so she went and opened it. The cat ran past her as she noticed her car windows were rolled down. The car was only a month old and she didn’t want to ruin the interior. She glanced both ways down the street, saw no one coming, and raced to her car. Just as she got in and got the windows rolled up, another car pulled up behind her in the driveway. Just as the rain let up, two young men in white shirts, carrying books and pamphlets, got out. They went up to her front door and rang the doorbell. She scooted way down in the seat, hoping they hadn’t seen her. They stood there a while, then went back to their car and got in. But the car wouldn’t crank. Instead it just groaned, sputtered, and died.
She silently swore as she listened to them vainly trying to get the engine to turn over. "Maybe they’ll get out and go for help and I can run back into the house before anyone sees me!” she thought. The jumbo pink rollers were pulling at her scalp and giving her a headache. And the blue facial mask had hardened to the point where her eyes were beginning to slant. “This isn’t happening to me," she thought as another car pulled up and three men got out.
“Got car trouble?” one of them asked.
“It won’t crank,” replied one of the first two.
“Oh no!” she almost screamed as she heard the unmistakable clanking of a tool box. “Come on rain!” she whispered to herself. But instead, the rain quit entirely and the sun came out.
“We’ll have to get you a new starter!” she heard someone say.
“Let’s ride down to the junkyard and I’ll pull one out for you,” offered another.
“It shouldn’t take more than an hour or two!” They called as they drove off.
It began to get hot. Her blue mask was melting in huge globs all over the interior of the new car. She pulled off her shirt and mopped some of it up. Then she eased one of the windows down just a tad in order to get some fresh air. When she did, she caught a glimpse of a familiar station wagon pulling up behind the disabled first car. A man, a woman, and three children got out.
It was her supervisor from work, his wife, and their three unruly children! “Can’t stand to see anyone with their hood up and not stop!” exclaimed the supervisor. Meanwhile, the three unruly kids began running rampant through her yard.
When they finally drove off after finding out help was on the way, the second car arrived again. They jacked the first car up and began taking the starter off. ”Dang!” one of them said. “I done stripped a bolt! I’ll have to run home and get my taps.” As he drove away, she swore silently that she would never, ever leave the house looking like this again. Not even for a minute!
But soon, work resumed on the starter and finally she heard the broken down car behind her roar into life. Again the clanking tool box. “Thanks a lot!”said someone. She was hungry, hot, and miserable from crouching down in the seat of her car all afternoon. As they drove off, she heard one of them ask, “By the way, who lives here?”
“I don’t know,” answered someone else, “but it doesn’t matter - they ain’t home and they’ll never even know we’ve been here!”
