my butt is burning: the story

A few years ago in celebration of our 15th wedding anniversary, I took blog-Stedman to Las Vegas. I made all the arrangements as a surprise. He really doesn’t like to travel and he hates surprises so I obviously wasn’t paying attention in our marriage at that point, but that is not this story. I had reserved a rental car through one of those online price comparision sites and chosen the cheapest mid-size car.   We were not going to be staying on the strip so we would be in need of a car. We arrived in Vegas and made our way to the car rental place which ended up to be a line of colossal proportions. We waited.   And waited.   And waited. Finally, I get to the desk, sign the paperwork and head to the parking lot to find our car. Our car. Our car was a stripped down sedan shell of a car. It barely had a steering wheel. I was not amused, but we reluctantly got in our car. It smelled bad. It smelled really really bad. It pretty much stunk. I wanted to go get a different car, but there was no way blog-Stedman was going back to the desk to re-enter the line of colossal proportions. So we drive off in the smelly sedan skeleton. We had gone about 3 miles and had the following conversation: Him(frustrated): My seat warmer is on. Me(mocking): This car doesn’t have seat warmers, it doesn’t even have power windows. It must be the sun from where it was parked. We are in Vegas, baby*! *the baby was added to this story for dramatic effect and did not appear in the actual story. 2 miles later: Him(exasperated): My seat warmer is on! Me(exasperated and mocking): THIS CAR DOESN’T HAVE SEAT WARMERS. Why would they need seat warmers in this part of the country? It is January. It is 70 degrees. 1 mile later: Him(exasperated and desperate): My butt is burning! Get the manual out of the glove compartment and look up how to turn off these seat warmers. Me(assured and being reassuring): There are NO seat warmers in this car. They don’t need them here and this pile of junk wouldn’t have them anyway. Right then, no mileage has accrued: Him(exasperated, desperate and close to tears?): My butt is burning if you don’t get the manual and turn my seat warmer off I am going to stop this car on the side of the road and do it myself. Me(quietly offended at being spoken to in that manner): Well, OK. So, I look in the manual and found the seat warmer page*… *CRAP! A whole page dedicated to seat warmers in this manual is not a good sign for my side of the argument. …and found the switch*… *CRAP!   There was a switch! …which could only mean*… *Really people, put two and two together ..that car had no business having seat warmers.