H: You do know how to jump a car right?

Zep: Well, sort of. We’ll figure it out.

H: Your battery looks a lot different than mine.

Zep: Ooo! Look, a positive and negative sign! See you put one on one and the other on the other.

H: But where are the little things we clamp onto? Man these are hard to open.

Zep: Use both hands.

H: Okay, we put the red on the red.

Zep: You do it. I don’t wanna die!

H: I can’t pull the red cover off the battery. You do it - it’s your car.

Zep: Should I turn the car off?

H: No, no, no. Just pull the red plastic off. And keep your hands away from that whirring belt thing.

Zep: Got it. Aw man, my hands are all dirty. Gross.

H: It won’t clamp on. Your battery is whack. Why are they on the side! Damn Cavalier.

Zep: What are you doing?? Get those off your car!! It’s not on mine yet!

H: The red one keeps popping off. It won’t stay.

Zep: Here, turn the clamp this way. Give it to me. …Okay, now you do the black one.

H: But it’s not really on there. It has to be connected.

Co-worker driving by: Do you guys need help?

H: Yeah - do you know how to do this?

Who hops out all eager beaver to help out a damsel and a fisherman in jumper-cable distress? The Texan.

(Zep: Let me tell the rest. . . you keep screwing it up. . . .)

I glance over at you and can see that you, too, are quite surprised; you have a look of "d'oh!" on your face, but realize that he's a boy nonetheless and boys usually have a way of figuring out jumper cables and batteries and stuff (even though they suck at figuring out the females of their species... but whatever).

So he, in full masculinity, testosterone so thick in the air that I can't breathe, grabs the jumper cables and hooks them up to my car like he's worked at garages longer than he's been designing. He then hooks them up to your car and I hear something pop in my car. It sounded somewhat like the jumper cable slipping off the red thing on my battery, but I thought maybe it was the sound of a successful car-hookup.

I didn't want to discourage him or embarrass him, so I say nothing. He starts your car. Nothing. You're trying to be all suave and cool, and say something like, "maybe it's so dead that it won't come back" to cover his ass, he says to me, "Uhhh, why don't you go in and rev your engine." So I'm revving the Cav, wondering what the hell that will do, but he said rev so naturally that I figured he had to know what he was talking about. By this time, the testosterone level in the co-worker’s car had risen sufficiently and they all start yelling out advice: "Be sure not to start it right away!" "Make sure that the red's on the red!"

Hey, thanks. Lotsa help.

I'm revving, the boys are yelling, you're waiting patiently for the miraculous sound of engine, the Texan's panicking, your car's not starting and he can't help but notice that you look cute in your striped cap, but who the hell is the fisherman with you. He's beginning to feel a bit less manly, especially when you say, "oh! the jumper cable slipped off the red thing in Zep’s car!"

He fidgets a bit, takes the jumper cables off your car and reddens a bit more. It's not the cold - he feels like a dork. He looks like a dork. He reattaches the jumper cables. No popping sound. He heads over to your car door, sweating despite the cold. The guys in the car are getting bored and hungry and thinking that if ever they're having car problems they won't call the Texan (yet they have no more advice to yell out). I'm about to ask, "do you want me to rev my engine again?" (like that helped) when vwah-lah! The Honda starts! We cheer like girls, he gets out of your car adjusting his britches, stretching out his neck in that stupid-manly way (like clamping 4 clamps on 4 color-coordinated plugs and turning a key is AT ALL manly). We thank him genuinely (more for the show than for actually starting your car), he turns, pauses, and says, and "You're welcome." I think he lowered his voice a few tones, just to make it more effective.

He didn't take off the jumper cables, lower our hoods, anything. Just ran off to the car full of guys and sped off to eat. I guess that's why there are no knights in shining armor helping out damsels in distress; they would get halfway through killing the dragon, realize that they were hungry, and head off to Taco Bell.

Thanks for the narrative, Zepdude.

Y’all, I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. Of all people. The Texan! Zep’s like, well, maybe it’ll spark conversation again.

I don’t want conversation sparked! I don’t want anything to do with him.

And I’m sure that attitude is very five-year-oldish, but whatever. I know I have pride issues that I need to just smackdown. Because pride gets you nowhere but lonelyville.

But a romantic relationship is not the one I need to be stirring right now. There are other things lifting in my life right now. Other relationships that need settling, sparking, nurturing.

I spent most of the weekend with my family. My cousin, Jo and I spent Saturday with the babies. Oh y’all, I see Sam’s little smile in my mind and I want to run to him. My cousin calls him his "little chocolate boy."

How could I ever think about leaving this? I grew up far, far away from my grandparents and cousins. Family was a twice a year thing. A couple weeks of Ohio Summers, a few more of grandmothers in Texas. I never understood why my mom sobbed when we’d leave her home. Just thinking about it now makes me want to weep. How did she raise us so far away from the unit of family?

When my grandfather was dying, I mean really dying, his last 6 weeks, I didn’t trek the 40 miles to go see him. Forty miles. Jo was there almost everyday, and certainly every weekend. She held his hand, she sat in a room filled with aunts and sisters and cousins and grandchildren and sang hymns. I couldn’t even bare to think of it.

But she grew up 14 miles away from MeMe and PaPa. Two thousand separated us.

I don’t know what it’s like to have a day to day relationship with my grandparents, with much of my family. But I’m learning.