I swear I was going to get most of the rest of my Christmas shopping done last night. Honest. I ended up driving past a mall, but that was about it.
Just after I got home from the office, I was prepared to bundle my boy into the car and take off for a little bit, leaving my wife to add a few more decorations to the tree. No sooner had I tossed my coat on the sofa, after getting in the front door, than the cell phone in the front pocket began ringing. I have the ringer set to a fairly funky music setting that makes one want to strut when hearing it, so I was in the process of swinging my hips a bit and 'getting down' as I picked it up. The call display showed it to be Chris, a coworker and former Fort McMurray roommate.
Now Chris, poor fella, still works full time up in God's Country (read: Ft. McMurray) and comes home on weekends via air or road. He had recently purchased a new truck and was driving it down for the holidays, doing me a favour in the process. You see, when I shook the oilsand of that city off my heels last Christmas, I left behind a TV, DVD player and my favourite rocking chair in the apartment I shared with Chris and one other roommate. I have had intentions of retrieving them, but it's been a fairly low priority since all the items would just be relegated to our increasingly cluttered basement anyway. With Chris driving down for Christmas, he agreed to haul down the TV and chair for me.
The chair, as a bit of an aside, is my favourite. Amy, the poor deluded lass, hates the thing. She was very happy to see it go up to Fort Mac. It's a wee bit older than I am, and is a truly ugly, green Sklar Pepplar swivel rocking chair. It's upholstered in some horrendous and slightly itchy weave that's fraying a bit on the arms. I basically stole it from my mom's house when I moved out, claiming ownership. I had been nursed in it as an infant and had claimed it as my official reading chair for a couple decades growing up; it was mine.
Now, with the chair in the box and the TV in the cab of the truck, Chris was driving down from Ft. McMurray. He anticipated arriving at my house by about 6.30PM. Just before 6, I received this phone call on my cell. Unfortunately, it was enough to quell my hip-shaking ebullience. Turns out that he was three hours into the four hour trek from the north and was just a wee bit south of Athabasca en route to St. Albert. Unintentional though it may have been, he was having venison for dinner.
The first deer made it across the road, Chris saw it, and he started to slow down. The second one, spurred on by the success of his compatriot, narrowly avoided the car in the oncoming lane only to be hit dead centre by Chris's truck. The only consolation for the deer was that one bright light was followed quickly and almost painlessly by another. From what my friend reports, the trajectory was quite impressive.
This left Chris with a ruined front end and, after a couple preliminary phone calls, no roadside assistance until morning. Add to that it was dark and somewhere below minus twenty Celsius. So Christmas shopping, and my impending Captain Highliner, would have to wait. He was only an hour north, so I went to retrieve him.
The funny part is that there ended up almost being two stranded individuals on the highway. I pulled up to his truck just after 7PM. I left my engine running and we started transferring stuff from his truck to mine. As Chris approached my passenger door to make room for the TV, it turned out to be locked. So was my side. And the keys were in the running vehicle. (Shit) I musta hit the 'lock' button as I was getting out. Thankfully, I keep the remote starter separate from the key-chain and it was nestled reassuringly in my coat pocket. The press of a button and a shared nervous laugh soon had us on our way.
About halfway home, Chris asked me what I would have done had I not had the remote in my pocket. I thought for a moment and replied that I probably would have been frustrated enough to use my TV to smash one of my truck windows. Probably.
So after finally dropping off my passenger and returning home, it was 9.30 and nary a shred of shopping had been done.
I hope nothing goes astray today; I haven't much time left...
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