The Day Blair Couldn't Lose or, "How We Should Have Won The Lottery"

Saturday was a good day for Blair.

It started off with a trip to the Lexus dealership. The display light in our '94 model had been burnt out, making it impossible to see the time. This was a continual source of small irritation to me, like a pimple that never grows but never goes away, just sticking around to stare you in the face every time you go to the mirror.

Blair didn't want to take the car in on the basis that he's never once dropped the car off for any form of repair and had it come in less than $1000. Fine, point taken. But give me break--it's a burnt out bulb. How bad could it be?

It reminded me of when we first bought our house and used our side door for the first 18 months because we had no idea how much it might cost to have the locks changed on the front and we didn't have a key that worked. When we finally had money saved, we called a guy out who fiddled at the front door for 5 minutes then turned to us and said, "That'll be eight dollars."

"Remember the locks?" I said to Blair. "Remember how stupid we felt? This is the same thing. We're going to laugh that we waited 6 months to change a $3 bulb."

So we drove up to the dealership and I went inside for coffee while Blair waited in line to drop the car off. Five minutes later, he was at my side.

"One thousand dollars," he said. "Can we go now?"

I stared at him. "You're joking."

But he wasn't. Turns out Lexus' don't have little $3 bulbs. Instead, they have $1000 crystal LCD displays or something like that, and they'd have to remove and replace the whole unit in order to repair the clock light.

My favorite part of this is how a sales guy came out and--with nothing but pure sincerity in his tone and body language--asked if since we weren't going to do the repair, we might like to consider trading in the car and looking at something new?

I couldn't help it. I laughed at him. "Uh, I think we'll just use our cell phones for the time and call it even," I said.

To his credit, he laughed and thanked us for coming in. You've just got to love a place where there's a chance of something like that happening. "Yes, hello. A bird craped on my windshield yesterday so I'm here for an upgrade. No, don't bother wiping it off. It's ruined for me now..."

As we're leaving the dealership I look at Blair. "You win," I said. "You were right. A thousand dollars."

"That's right, baby," he said. "I was RIGHT because I am the MAN."

He was right about everything that day--the location of a candle store we were hunting for (I was convinced it couldn't be in the shopping center we were circling and was berating him when we came upon it. I hate when that happens.), some obscure radio quiz question, and that the movie theatre wouldn't be crowded. It was a bunch of little things, but he didn't miss all day. To top it off, when we got home we found the results of our perk test for the cabin property waiting for us, all approved.

That settled it. I oppose the NC lotto but my husband was on fire and the pot was 300 million. He bought a ticket. Given the flow of the day, I would not have been surprised if we had won something - like $5000 for three correct numbers. But alas, we had only one number match so apparently the mojo had left the room.

And on the bright side, at least he was wrong about something =)