MsGyver

In the midst of wind-driven rain on Sunday, as we were transferring from old car to new car the insane amount of stuff the Mrs. carts around with her (and trying unsuccessfully to keep it dry), I came across a big roll of masking tape. It reminded me of an incident last summer that (sort of) explains why she carries so much stuff:

We were going out to do some errands on a Sunday afternoon, and she needed to stop at an ATM. We pulled into a newly-built bank branch near the house with a drive-up teller machine. Now, the Mrs. is only 4' 11", so she doesn't always see things the same way or from the same angle that taller people do. Typically she has to get out of the car to use a drive-up ATM, but in this case she believed she was able to reach it from the driver's seat. Unfortunately, neither of us could see that the machine had a design flaw: there was a gap at least an inch wide between the outer housing of the machine and the card slot. Of course, her card fell into the gap (and I'll bet a lot of other people's did too).

She spent several minutes trying to reach her hand far enough down into the gap to grab the card, but it wasn't wide enough. All the while she was understandably growing more and more angry and frustrated. Another car pulled up; the driver assessed the scene and wisely chose to find another ATM, because the Mrs. wasn't leaving without her card, and she certainly wasn't going to let anyone else near that machine before getting it back.

Suddenly she ran to the trunk and pulled out a big plastic container full of craft supplies. I started to ask her what she was doing, but after more than a decade together, I know better than to try to talk to her in certain situations, and this was one of them. In a couple of minutes she had fashioned a crude sort of arm from a couple of pens held together with the masking tape, with a wad of more tape, sticky side out, on the end. She stuck it into the gap, and with a little manipulation she had her card back. Relieved, and also justifiably pleased with herself, she said, "I'm definitely keeping that tape in the car all the time." No word on whether the bank has fixed its ATM design or not; we certainly haven't been back there.