Jump Starting Levels of Awkward

We were in Hillcrest—the residential homosexual community of San Diego—and it was a backstreet crowded with cars parked in front of dozens of small houses and duplexes. My mother, my sister, my best friend and I stood in the middle of the street and watched as my father and my boyfriend—who had just met—tinkered under the hood of my dead silent, fusion orange, Chevy Colorado.

I had left my fog lights on, the Hispanics in the house facing the tuck told my dad. They saw me leave it. Why hadn’t they told me? They didn’t say, but I suspected it had something to do with me being a dumb white girl and them getting to witness, now, the spectacle of us trying to find a way to jump it when all the parking spaces next to it were taken and the hood was facing the sidewalk.

Speaking of the sidewalk, behind my dad—who was firing one question after another at my boyfriend who was sweating and not from the labor of reattaching my exhausted batter—was the forest green Hummer H3 pulled up on the sidewalk between a palm tree and a small blue Mazda, hood to hood with my truck. The black and red jumper cables ran from the battery beneath its lifted hood and the cables that should have been connected to the battery in my truck.

Now back to the Hispanics. When we arrived to try and get my truck running, I had noticed the Hispanics. They were somewhere between fifteen to twenty of them crowded on the porch of their tiny blue duplex, all standing, two of which were playing guitars and wearing large brimmed straw hats. When my dad maneuvered his vehicle onto the sidewalk they stopped playing their music and crowded their way down the stairs with large eyes and amused smiles.