Contact Your Dealer

So before anyone asks, I got permission from DeAnne to tell this story.  She said as long as I made it funny, I could.  I don't see how this couldn't be funny.


As most of you know, my mother is actually funnier than I am. The best part about this is, half the time she doesn’t even know it. She is truly hysterical. Unlike my Father who knew good & well that he could crack people up, DeAnne is just plain funny without any effort. Don’t get me wrong, I know she purposely does silly things on occasion, which yes, is funny, but the best ones are not intended, and this is one of them.

Every year for a dozen years now DeAnne has organized the Advertising Community Talent Show (ACTS). It’s a wonderful show; it raises money for a worthy cause. If you really want to know about it go to www.actslv.org . We are recruiting ACTS right now for this year. Various people have helped and the show is a story in itself, but this is not that story. This takes place after the show, last year.

ACTS was great last year. 80’s themed, wonderfully talented people performed and the advertising community in Southern Nevada again supported us at Green Valley Ranch. The show was about three hours and it really is exhausting. There were 13 acts, about 30 performers, just to give you an idea. It’s quite a production. DeAnne performed, with Dirk (yep, same one from the chicken story – see a pattern?) and she was awesome. After the show, there’s a lot to be done. Props, including a 6 foot high wedding cake, platform shoes, wigs, a life-size mannequin, various feather boas and a huge amount of neon spandex need to be packed. I’m backstage schlepping and well, most of the performers were out in the casino socializing.

Now a lot of us got rooms, which is good. But some of us, DeAnne included, like sleeping at home. Which may or may not be good in this case. Really, everyone is exhausted at this point, but high on performance buzz that often follows a great show. In DeAnne’s case, she was really into it. Performing as Grace Slick, she bought a wig for the number and now, two hours after the show has ended, will NOT take it off. She has developed some sort of alter ego that often comes with donning a disguise except as most of you know, DeAnne already looks like Grace Slick, so what the hell was the wig for? I couldn’t tell ya. I will say she looked great.

Looking good and feeling good are two different things, however, and D was not about to spend the night at Green Valley Ranch. The conversation went like this:

Ma, really, stay. We are all tired.  We have a room, there’s another bed.

Nope. Going home. I’m exhausted.

That was it. Off she went, keys in hand, towards valet. Again, in a normal family this would be the end of the story. But for us, not so much.

DeAnne gets to valet, wig and all, and jumps into her shiny new Hyundai Sonata for the hefty trek across town back to her house. It’s mostly freeway, the 215, but still it’s a haul. It is midnight on a Friday night in Vegas, so yes Virginia, there is a ton of traffic.

Now before I proceed, let me explain. DeAnne loves new cars. She trades in more cars than anyone I have ever known. The problem is, she’s got a few clients and friends that are associated with auto dealerships, and well, no self control. So she sells them a remote broadcast for the radio station she works for, shows up to “make sure everything is ok” and dammit if she doesn't buy a car. They see her coming you know – she’s had eight cars since 2000. Really. This happens all the time. This was one of those cars. She just bought it a couple of days before from her friend Frank who is the Big Kahuna at Henderson Hyundai.  I'm sure she bought it at a remote.

So, back to our hero - She pulls out from the valet at the casino and into traffic on Green Valley Parkway, gets in the turn lane for the freeway and hits her turn signal, makes the turn and takes the ramp in to traffic. No problemo. The turn signal clicks off……..and wait, what the hell is that?

She realizes, going 65, in the dark, in heavy traffic, on the freeway in a Grace Slick wig, that somehow her hazard lights are on.

I asked her what she had said at this point….

“Shit”.

Well traffic is really moving and she is scared to death to try and pull over. Besides, it’s just hazard lights; the switch has to be around here somewhere, right? It is at this point that DeAnne starts playing Go Fish with the mechanical features of her new 2009 Sonata. Horn? Go Fish. Cruise Control? Go Fish. Electric seat? Go Fish. Interior lights? Well, you get the picture. DeAnne told me she learned more about the inner workings of her vehicle in that 30 minute drive that she would have ever known about the car. EV-ER.

So here she is barreling down the freeway, hazards on and shit is going Inspector Gadget in the car. Lights are blinking, horns going off, seats moving – it is bad. But wait it gets worse. She finds the windshield wipers. Dear God. Now the windshield fluid is squirting and the wipers are going batshit. I mean if she couldn’t see before, now she was screwed. This goes on from Green Valley Parkway to Decatur. Now, for those of you that don’t know, that’s a decent amount of heavily travelled freeway.

In any other city, a heavily made up 4 foot eleven Italian woman in dressed in pleather and a Grace Slick wig zipping down a crowded freeway with every possible blinking, swishing part (including the gas tank cover) in perpetual motion - would attract attention. I don’t think she could get away with this in say, Ocean Springs Mississippi. But in Vegas, just another day. Not one call was made.

At this point, DeAnne is pissed. She’s nearing her exit and does not want to drive all the way down Decatur Boulevard with a possessed Hyundai (rhymes with Sunday by the way, DeAnne made sure I knew that). She exits the freeway and pulls in to the first parking lot available. This lot of course, is not lit and in the midst of her education on her new toy she did not take notes and therefore does not even know how to turn on the interior dome light. As a matter of fact, she did something so that the light now will not come on even when you open the door.

Well, time to take stock. She’s on the side of the road at Decatur and the freeway and cannot find the button for the lights and she’s not that far from home…might as well make a run for it. She puts the car in drive and off she goes. It’s almost a straight shot.

Thankfully and with more luck than skill DeAnne arrives at home and opens the garage. The gas tank door is open. The windshield wipers are still on delay and radio is on AM, but she’s home. “Thank God” she exclaims. “I’m going to turn this effen car off and go to bed.” It is at this point that DeAnne again is educated in automotive skill. She does not know that when you turn the car off, the hazard lights stay on. That’s what they are there for - a HAZARD. Such as an immobile car.

She is now sitting in a black garage. Yellow. Black. Yellow. Black. Yellow. Black.

“Shit”.

She gets back in the offending vehicle and now she’s really pissed. I mean how hard can it be? Then a flash of brilliance. The owner’s manual. In one motion the glove box is open and the manual is in hand. Hazards….hazards…..she’s mumbling to herself now. Ah –HA! Hazards. Now, she did not see the little drawing of the dashboard showing all of the little buttons and explanations. Here is what she did see:

“In the event that your hazard lights will not turn off, contact your Dealer”.

Well, ok she thought. If you say so.

While sitting in her closed alternating black and yellow garage with the owner’s manual of the vehicle on her lap, DeAnne whips out her phone and dials Frank’s personal cell number from Henderson Hyundai.

I’m not kidding.

Sometimes I wonder if there is a God, because thankfully, Frank did not answer. But of course, DeAnne left a message. At 1am.

“Frank, hi it’s me DeAnne. Hey Frank, when you get a minute, could you call me? I’m here in my garage and my hazard lights won’t turn off. I looked in the manual and it said to call you, so I’m calling. OK. OK. Bye.”

DeAnne now surrenders to the situation. She takes the keys out of the ignition and walks away from her blinking shiny new Hyundai. She leaves it, blinking, all night in the garage. Deal with it in the morning. At 1:30 am, she’s done.

Bright and early in the AM, DeAnne awakens. In those few foggy moments in between groggy and really being awake she beings to replay the movie in her head from the night before.

If all this is true, she thinks, I will have a car parked in my garage with the fucking hazard lights on.

She opens the door to the garage.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

“Shit”.

Literally in five seconds she walks over to the car, opens the door, leans inside and presses the huge, HUGE, big red button in the middle of the dashboard with the red HAZARD triangle on it and shuts the car door.

“ Well,. Guess I’d better call Frank”.