Teamwork

I grew up playing team sports. For most of my childhood I played soccer. Throughout high school I was on various teams, and although I ended up gravitating to more individualized sports like cross country running, ultimately, I was still playing for a team. We all wore the same uniform.

Now that I'm an adult, the main team sport I play is the marriage team. My husband and I, both highly independent people, figure out how to make decisions benefitting the team, and we bring very opposite skillsets to the table.

For example, my husband is really good at solving problems. Our plumbing is f'ed? No problem, he's on it. We need to jerry-rig something to solve another issue? He can do it. He likes to navigate without Google Maps. He doesn't call a repairman without giving it his all first. He has a brain that is procedural and logical, and it steamrolls through issues with efficiency.

And you can see why this is helpful. We save a lot of money, and sometimes time, thanks to his I can do this attitude. But, like everything, there too much of a good thing isn't always a great thing. One thing he doesn't always do is ask for help. If we are lost, I will immediately ask someone for directions. This makes his soul die, but usually we get where we are going a lot faster when I ask someone for help. (He will debate this, but this is my blog.)

One day, I had to work and he told me he was going hiking. In the early afternoon, I texted him, asking how his hike was going, not necessarily expecting a response, but whatever. Almost immediately he responded.

I'm stuck in the truck.

We had gotten that truck stuck a ton. Without any increase in blood pressure, I responded:

You want me to come rescue you? lol

He responded immediately.

Yes.

I nearly dropped my phone.

MY HUSBAND WAS REQUESTING A RESCUE?

To use the parlance of the times, this was unprecedented. Never in the history of me knowing him, had he admitted defeat in regards to getting the truck stuck. Granted, I texted him and jokingly offered to rescue him, which he took me up on, and maybe does or doesn't count as asking for a rescue (we are still debating), but nonetheless, I called my boss, told him I had to leave early to save my husband, and I set about figuring out how to get him.

We had one truck, and it was currently stuck in the snow on a mountain pass. I ran through a list of people in the surrounding area (one in a neighboring state) who had a truck. To my great surprise my friend's dad and her husband happened to be in the same room, and readily agreed to assist me. My friend's dad's usual outfit is a tie-dye polo and Chao sandals, and when I told my boss my plan, he jokingly asked if this individual would put on shoes. Of course, I said.

No. My friends showed up at my house, I had a synthetic jacket and hunting boots, and my friend's dad was in his normal uniform of Chaos sandals, shorts and a tie-dye polo shirt. It was adventure time.

We drove the hour to where my husband said he was. We went up a paved but sketchy mountain pass, got to the top, turned onto a dirt road and crept forward until there he was, my husband's truck, buried up to the axel in snow, my husband wearing the old work coat we kept in the truck. He was covered in mud and fairly soggy.

"Shovels. If I hadn't taken my shovel out of the truck, I think I could have done it," my husband said, while we pulled three shovels out of the rescue truck.

The three of us wearing closed toed shoes dug the truck out, and my friend's dad rigged a tow system. To give credit where credit is due, my husband had worked hard to un-fuck his situation. He had apparently been stuck since ten am. We got to him after three pm. He'd managed to get all four chains on, and he had done a lot of digging with just his hands, but it hadn't been enough.

About an hour later, after we'd snapped the rope twice, had several discussions about ball hitches, and dug, dug, dug, until the rear differential was finally clear, my husband was able to rally his truck out of the snow.

The weather had been blisteringly nice, the truck had been stuck on flat ground only a few dozen yards from snowless ground, and he was only stuck about an hour from our house. All in all, this was a fairly painless, low stakes rescue mission.

And it would not have happened with the assistance of awesome friends. It also would not have happened had I not sent a random text during a lull in my afternoon.

While we drove home, my husband told me he called an off road tow company. they quoted him $250/hour with a minimum of three hours. My husband told them he would call friends, and they dropped the price to $125/hour.

"So the moral of the story is that those off-road guys you can negotiate with," he told me.

I did not think this was the moral of the story at all. In fact, this was completely extraneous to any moral I felt passionate about. What about asking for help? What about the fact that I organized an incredibly efficient rescue?

But instead I said, "Well, looks like you can take me out to dinner with all that money I saved us."

And so we went out to dinner, and we still have some money left over. Imagine all the dates we can go on now that we aren't paying for off-road rescues.

#teamwork