The Fan Belt

I thought fan belts only made noise when they were wearing out or broken. Brittany never thought about them at all. The last time she was home she went out with a friend the night before going back to school. They were just going to drive around for a quiet talk.

She called her dad from the road, “My car is making a really weird noise.” They went back and forth with Brittany doing her best to describe it, but they couldn’t figure it out. They finally agreed that John would take her car to church in the morning since he had to be there early and she would ride over with me and leave for school from church because she had to be at work by 3pm.

Neither of them thought about the stacks of nicely organized items in the laundry room ready to be packed neatly into her car for the trip back to Western.

And it was pouring rain on Sunday morning.

Brittany had brought home even more laundry then usual this time. While she always says she’ll do it, and I know she means it, I’ve ended up sorting and folding it every visit all by myself. I usually wash it right away because she comes in the door saying she has nothing clean to wear, and then I end up having even more loads to do before she leaves.

By that Sunday morning I had done all the laundry (twice) and had it and all the things she needed to take back to school neatly stacked in the laundry room ready to go.

John left before we got up, without any of her stuff and didn’t hear anything unusual while driving her car. I carried her stuff to the garage and carefully loaded it into the trunk of my car hoping it would stop raining by the end of church. It didn’t. We made dozens of soggy trips between my car and hers transferring everything. I was still trying to keep it all in some kind of order, while Brittany was gathering up armloads and throwing!

As she slammed the hatchback door down, gave me a bear hug and drove away I shook my head. Brittany had been born on her due date and that was pretty much the last time I had control of the situation!

Oh, the fan belt? She took it in to the dealer near her school and he asked her if she ever drove without the radio blaring. She had to think hard and said “maybe once” (the night she was with her friend and heard the strange noise.) He told her the noise she heard was just a normal whirring of the fan belts.