By the time Lori met the guys,they’d been together for over twenty years.They ran RVA Auto and Tire,a full-service automotive repair and body shop in Richmond’s East End.Lori had never actually taken her car there—she favored new cars over used,and always returned to the dealership to take advantage of any discounts on oil changes,tire rotations,and other services they offered.Jack and Brandt weren’t exactly the type of guys she usually met at the museum bookstore where she worked part-time,and they didn’t hang out in the coffee shops or hipster cafes in Carytown on weekends.They didn’t like museums,or natural parks,or historical battlefields.They were sexy and sweet,but she would’ve never really gotten to know them if she hadn’t decided to take a class on rudimentary auto care basics offered by the city’s parks and rec department one spring evening.
Lori always read through the parks and rec classes looking for something fun to do.She wanted to meet people—okay,to be honest,she wanted to meet a guy;there,she could admit it,if only to herself.She was over thirty and forty seemed to be approaching at high speed,and she didn’t want to hit it alone.So she went to all the free offerings around town,and in Richmond,there were plenty.Festivals,races,reenactments,wine tastings,sporting events,book readings…any and everything she could find to attend that wouldn’t cost too much and might land her a date,she went to with high hopes.
Then there were the courses she took to satisfy her craft hobby.It’d started with scrapbooking,which had been in vogue at the time but slowly seemed to be dying out.She’d moved into mail art,but the cost of postage was prohibitive,and the stuff she got in return never seemed as high in quality as what she sent.So she taught herself to sew,and knit,and crochet,and fell in love with needlework,especially cross stitch,which was as easy as following a pattern and could be done while watching TV.
When she discovered the parks and rec department offered inexpensive craft classes,she started taking as many as she could work into her schedule.She learned needle felting,and tile mosaics,and something neat but highly impractical called zendoodling that soon filled her notebooks and any blank sheet of paper within easy reach.Then she started taking cooking classes,and a few writing ones,too,learning the ins and outs of short story creation and poetry.She even signed up for a few low-impact aerobics courses,though they were a bit hard on her knees,and one season—and one season only—she played something called pickleball.
In early March when the new class booklet came out,Lori sat down in front of the TV with a cup of hot ginger tea and leafed through the pages,pen in hand,circling everything she planned to do in the coming months.A class on tax preparation sounded like it might be helpful,and one on starting an herb container garden had promise,too.Then,from the corner of her eye,she caught the words Auto Care for Women
She folded the page over to study the course listing more closely.Sometimes she thought it’d be nice to know a thing or two about cars.Well,not in general,but her car in particular.So the next time she went to the dealership,she wouldn’t feel as if the guys in the service department were talking down to her or trying to pull one over on her,telling her she needed new air filters or spark plugs for outrageous prices.The class listing claimed to teach students how to change those things and more,like windshield wipers and tires,which would be handy to know.
The one time Lori had tried to change her own wiper,it had come off on the interstate during a downpour,and she’d spent the next ten minutes listening to the bare metal arm squeal across the glass as she squinted through driving rain until she could make it to the nearest exit.If she could learn how to put a wiper on right,she’d save herself from having to pay someone else to do it
Could she really learn how to change a tire?That’d be cool.
The class was only six bucks.Quickly she circled that one.It was offered by RVA Auto,so even though the class was marketed as“for women,”who knew what sort of hot mechanic would be teaching it?