Stories

Last October the Armstrong family bought a dishwasher in the hopes that when we die we will go to heaven like all the other dishwasher-owning parents who sterilize bottles. I’m still a little confused as to how someone who bottle feeds their baby can end up in heaven, though, even if they sterilize the nipples, because God has himself decreed that mothers who don’t breast feed their babies go to hell, and by extension the non-breast fed baby is doomed to an eternity of shoveling coal for Satan. This is all discussed in the New Testament.

When we bought the dishwasher we also bought a garbage disposal because a new dishwasher won’t work without one. Against our better judgment we bought both items at Best Buy, Satan’s Home on Earth, but only because 1) the dishwasher was on sale and 2) all the Best Buys in Utah have special parking spaces for pregnant women. I was six months pregnant at the time, and the special Best Buy parking space was like a corporate-sponsored invitation to eat WHATEVER THE FUCK I WANTED. No matter how big my ass became, no matter how wide the swipe of my waddle, Best Buy totally had my back. At Best Buy I could swell to the size of a moose and I would never have to walk more than thirty feet to the store entrance. I was pregnant, and Best Buy cared!

The disposal we bought came with a 12-year manufacturer’s warranty, which means that it shouldn’t break FOR THE NEXT 12 YEARS. Other than the seven dead bodies we shoved down the drain over Christmas we haven’t used the disposal for anything more than to grind up a few leftover mushy peas, and they were mushy as mushy peas can sometimes be. Over the weekend this disposal that has 11 years and 6 months left on its warranty, the disposal that has been used for nothing but mushy pea removal started leaking! Out the side! All over our new cabinetry! Onto our wood floors! And the usually serene and patient Husband who normally stands by to watch the usually depraved and chemically imbalanced Wife lose her shit TOTALLY LOST HIS SHIT.

So the family with no shit piled into the truck and headed to Best Buy, disassembled and leaking disposal in hand, to see if we could piece our shit together again. This time we couldn’t park in the special parking space because I’m no longer pregnant (THANK THE LORD GOD JESUS!) and we had to park in the non-pregnant parking space and walk an extra 20 feet to the door. We found this inconvenience totally unacceptable as this is America and we shouldn’t have to walk an extra 20 feet for anything. AM I RIGHT? AM I RIGHT? This is the best country on Earth! WE DON’T WALK NOWHERE FOR NUTHING. Damn straight.

I carried the still-under-warranty disposal and Jon had Leta, the only member of this family with anything resembling pieced together shit, strapped to his chest in the Baby Björn, her chubby, innocent cheeks facing outward, her arms and legs poking out the sides like a jumping jack frozen in mid-air. We marched right up to the Returns/Exchanges counter, plopped the leaking disposal on the counter and started recounting our long-winded Best Buy nightmare to the girl standing on the other side. Her eyes immediately glazed over. The girl had BRACES, for God’s sake, CLEAR PLASTIC BRACES, and she obviously couldn’t count to ten, let alone decipher a receipt. Who did she think she was kidding, clear plastic braces? I could still see them! SOMEONE IS IN DENIAL.

She listened to most of our story, but before we could get to the end where we would have talked about Best Buy’s fist and its location being UP OUR ASS, she cut us off and said something about the $10 Best Buy warranty we didn’t buy and because we didn’t buy it we can’t get our money back or exchange the disposal for a new one. And the patient and serene Husband with the chubby baby on his chest began spewing obscenities like an eager volcano let loose, his hands on his hips, the dangling innocent baby drooling and smiling at the sparkly plastic braces, YOU COCKSUCKING MOTHERFUCKER ASSWIPES! WE’LL NEVER FUCKING BUY A GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING THING AT THIS GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING SHITHOLE AGAIN, MOTHERFUCKER!

And then he stormed off, huffing and puffing, still uttering FUCK! and GRUMBLE COCKSUCKER GRUMBLE FUCK! and from behind you could see Leta’s arms and legs wiggling as she drooled and cooed and chewed on the collar of her shirt. Why they didn’t take us seriously I’LL NEVER KNOW, but all those heaven points we stored up by breastfeeding and sterilizing nipples just went down the leaky disposal.