dress

My friend and I looked at each other over her ancient, crusty car battery after we discovered that neither of us had jumper cables.

"Maybe the guys at the shop will come over here to install the new battery," she said.

"You'd better put on a short skirt," I said. I was already wearing a dress. (White. Not the best move when working on a car.)

"That is exactly what I was thinking," she said.

"Heels?" she asked.

"Always a good idea."

"I'll put on the bright lipstick, too," she said.

Thus attired for battle, we set out for the tire store. (Look, the sexism is there. We were merely acknowledging it.)

We* were not successful in flirting our way into getting the guy at the counter to offer someone to come out to her house to replace the battery for us (not our fault; it is a big chain and I suspect they have policies), but he did put the battery in my trunk so we could try to swap them out ourselves.

"Is that a sword?" he asked.

"Yes, but it's not sharp," I said. "It's a practice sword."

"Right..." he said, dubious.

We utterly failed at switching out the batteries, due to the mysterious disappearance of the correct size wrench from her tool kit.

Instead, we ran to the nearest big box store and bought a cheap set of jumper cables.

My wee little beastie did a right good job of getting a newer, more expensive car back on the road. And I didn't even get my dress dirty.

* She did all the work, really. I was distracted by a phone call that I had to deal with immediately.