Heather Anne

As someone whose personality is half-made of Batman, it’s not surprising that the thing I abhor most is being rescued. I hate it. I hate, hate it. There are only five people in the whole world that I will call for help, and if none of those people answer their cell phones, well, I'd just assume be eaten by a bear than ask anyone else.

This weekend my truck started acting all wonky, and by Monday it was apparent that it was going to need to see the doctor. On Tuesday I devised a plan that would cause three of my five rescuers minimal effort to help me. In fact, no one would have to drive more than ten miles to allow me to get my truck healed.

I took little Hedwig to the mechanic yesterday morning, spoke to him (the mechanic) several times on the phone, looked up relevant information on Wikipedia, stopped on the way home from work to pay for my repairs, and then happily went to get my truck last night. When Amy dropped me off in the parking lot, I gotta tell you, I was feeling pretty awesome. This is how thirty-year-olds handle their problems, I thought. They approach them with a level-head, they don’t put too many people out, they pay for it out of their savings account, and then they have a nice spot of tea, holding their pinky high in the air as they sup from their china cups.

I got in my truck, started it up, and bam! it was still doing the same terrible thing.

I am not one to worry or panic or be personally offended by things. I decided I would just take my truck back today. There is certainly an element of trouble-shooting to being a mechanic. But as I drove along and little Hedwig kept bucking and jumping, I started wondering why the mechanic didn’t take it for a test drive when he'd finished the repairs. And then I began to wonder what he actually did to my truck. And then, I started thinking about that chunk of money that had come out of my savings account.

It’s not like I was saving that money for retirement or emergencies. No. As sure as teenage boys go on dates to get laid, I was saving that money to go back to England. Why did my mechanic not want me to go to England? Why did he hate England? You know who else hated England? Hitler. My mechanic was Hitler. Hitler had the Luftwaffe. So, probably, did my mechanic — his own personal fleet of planes that he built from scrapped car parts and lunch money he’d stolen from little children. I got angrier and angrier as I drove, thinking about those poor Londoners in August 1940, when the Battle of Britain began.

Finally, I took the only course of action available to me: I called my dad.

He is several thousand miles and many time zones away from me this week. He answered his cell phone, excused himself from a meeting, and when he was safely out of the conference room, I cried, “Dad! My mechanic is going to try to sink England!”

I talked him through the whole thing: the spark plugs, the plug wires, the filters, the fuel injection blah blah. (He was so unimpressed when I used the words “blah blah.”) He told me how I should handle the situation, and when I didn’t immediately respond, I knew he knew I was frightened. If there is anything that sparks my dad’s baser instinct of aggression, it is people meandering aimlessly through airports, malls, and Home Depot; and also it is people being mean to one of his girls.

“Do you want me to handle this?” he offered.

“Yes, Daddy,” I said.

I dropped my truck back off at the mechanic this morning. They weren’t open yet, so I called and left a message that said, “Hi, this is Heather, and, um, my fuel injection blah blah is worse than before I brought my truck in. You maybe should have test-driven my truck before you gave it back to me because now you have to deal with MY DAD! Here is his phone number. Call him when you’re ready to feel like crap for trying to steal my England!”

When my grandpa completed his phase of Save Heather Anne yesterday morning, he said, “If you need to be rescued again, just holler!”

It’s good to know you can holler if you need help. It must be what the people of Gotham feel like every time they shine that Bat Signal up into the sky.