Under Pressure

Foreword:
Occasionally, I'll decide that the person I'm talking to isn't batshit crazy (or let's be honest, amusing to me) so they'll make it into my phone.  Eventually, after that I'll kick them to the curb or decide that we need to hang out in person.  More often than not, if we make it to the in person stage and sparks aren't flying, we'll end up friends.  This story is about the 2nd or 3rd hangout with a good friend of mine we'll call Agent Q.  I'm just going to set the stage in stereotypes so that you can fully picture my friend here.  Pale rocker guy who works in IT, now mix that with Agent Q from the recent bond film Skyfall and you'll have some generic things to build off of that may or may not reflect my friend.  Now that you've substituted my friend mentally for someone who works/worked in your IT department and one of the hottest nerd characters out there you can enjoy the story even more.  Personality wise, these guys are generally very sweet, a bit rough around the edges, plagued by varying health issues (more often than not due to a poor man-food based diet and a lack of culinary skills), a fabulous sarcastic wit and knowledge of everything nerdy.  In short, someone I would spend time with and introduce to the marvelousness of certain British shows like The Inbetweeners, Misfits and...well, I could go on but my nerdy TV habits are not the focus here.  Let us begin our tale, shall we?  - S

Meat & Potatoes:
It was a Friday or Saturday night, and I had invited M to my place for an
The Inbetweeners marathon.  I love the pizza place about 2-3 blocks from my house so we ordered some noms for pickup and ventured out to get it.  Normally I walk there and back because it's so close but Agent Q insisted on driving to maximize the amount of episodes he could view before returning home.  Everything went smoothly picking up the pizza and paying for it.  So we got in the car and Agent Q put his car into reverse and we drifted back....and didn't stop slowly drifting back.

Apparently my friend needed new brakes, but didn't realize how bad it really was.  So, in a state of panic and fear (while going about a millimeter a second) he starts trying to steer the car into a curb behind us or something, turning the wheel wildly and repeatedly pressing the brakes.  I let this go on for about 15 seconds before I touch his arm gently and say "Q...the parking brake".  He blinks a few times at me says "Oh..." and slams on the parking break, bringing us to a complete jerking stop.  If I had been in his situation I would've used it to gradually slow us down.  It was one of those giant lever parking brakes that he could have gradually used to slowly stop us, rather than the ones more popular today that are a damn button.

Once we came to a complete jerking halt he reaches over to me and says "Are you OK?"  Well, I looked quickly around and we couldn't have gone more than 10 feet backwards.  We hadn't even fully left the parking space. I repressed my wanting to hysterically laugh at him and the situation and managed to tell him that I was fine.  I mean, how hurt can you get after drifting about 10 feet at a snail's pace.  He was a bit freaked out and clearly not the best under pressure situations like this, and didn't know what to do about his car.  I of course had the simple solution of calling AAA when he had to leave an him riding in the tow truck back to his place.  I also explained to him that he could leave his car here or we could use the parking brake a bit more subtly to get his car back to my place.  He opted to take his car back to my place and we made the very nervous (on his part) trip back to my place.  The rest of the evening went on without incident, until the tow truck guy got there.

I had towed my car to the repair shop like a week or two before and it was the same tow truck guy who showed up at my place last time.  He remembered me apparently, and stated such.  I just smiled at him, said that the towing service included any vehicles that I was using as transportation at the time of the breakdown and I wanted this vehicle to go to the location of my friend's choice, also that my friend would be riding with him to that location.  I also informed him that the location was within my mileage allowance as well.  I'm not sure if the tow truck guy was looking for a bribe or something, but I kind of thwarted that plan by actually knowing the terms and conditions of my membership.  Which, I also found hysterical because I'm sure that he got other people frazzled before.  Nice try dude.  :-D

Reflection:
In the end, this is just a quick funny story.  Our hang out could technically be considered a date since we decided to just be friends after this happened, but it always comes to mind whenever people tell funny stories where people flip out and don't know what to do.  The true lesson from this story?  This is more proof that I'm probably going to be a survivor during the zombie apocalypse and you should join me when I set up my camp.  Provided, you also have balls of steel.