Not So EZ‏

I do dumb stuff. It just happens that way. I don't mean to, but pretty often the dumbness sneaks in.

This latest incident happened on Saturday in Houston. This past weekend was Elizabeth's baby shower weekend. Deb & I got to Elizabeth's parent's house on Saturday to get things set up and decorated for the Sunday shower. After we were done we headed to Elizabeth's, in Katy, in my car. We hopped on Beltway 8 (my Dallas toll tag will work in Houston) but I didn't get over to the EZ Tag lane in enough time, as it's a tricky part of the highway, so we just went through the tollbooth. As we got into the lane we didn't notice that it didn't say EZ Tag. Most tollbooths are either/or so I didn't think much of it. Bad, bad, bad mistake. We were in a line of cars and not paying much attention. Deb & I don't exactly compliment each other well in the goofy/dumbness category. We really bring out the worse in each other. How we ever made it through college as roommates I'll never know, but I digress. It was our turn at the toll and as I drove up to it I saw that the arm was down. In Dallas we don't have the arm things, at least not usually. I assumed my tag would register and the arm would pop up. Nope. Not the case. Turns out we were not in an EZ Tag lane but in a coin only lane. WHAT? Coin only? We didn't have $1.50 in change. Deb and I looked at each other and began to freak out. Again, we do not help each other in these kinds of situations. Neither of us remained calm. As we were yelling and freaking out we both grabbed for our purses and started digging for change. I KNEW I didn't have $1.50 in change and was pretty sure I only had a few pennies. I started throwing handfuls of coins into the thing. Deb would hand me her coins and I'd do the same. I was in PANIC mode. In the meantime Deb proceeds to ask me if I'm kidding. After about the third time she asked that I screamed "I'M NOT KIDDING. I HAVE NO MONEY." Yah, I wasn't doing that just for fun. We threw, and threw, and threw in our money, most of it being pennies. We cleared out our wallets and were lacking 28 cents. 28 CENTS?! We didn't have 28 CENTS?! We were freaking and didn't know what to do. Oh, did I forget to mention that the cars, which had formed in the line behind us, were playing a nice little ditty on their horns. Yes, this didn't help matters. At one point I considered just driving through the arm and breaking it to get away. My car is only about a year and a half old though so I quickly decided against damaging it like that. I told Deborah she HAD to get out and go ask the lady behind us for 30 cents. She looked at me like I was joking but I think the look I gave her back showed her I WASN'T. She ran back to the car, obtained 50 cents, I threw it in (to which Deb thought I missed at first), the arm went up, my heart started beating again and Deb yelled "Drive, drive, drive...before we get shot!!!!!" I drove, drove, drove trying to get far away from anyone in line behind us. Deb said the lady that gave us the money was trying her hardest not to laugh. After we regained composure we began dying laughing. We could not believe what we had just done. REALLY? Who does that?! And the stinkin' tollbooth workers didn't try to help AT ALL. Boo to them. In the minutes and days since this incident we've retold this story many times, however, no one finds it as hilarious as we did. Guess you just had to be there. Oh, and side note, everyone said that the coin thing doesn't take pennies. Thank you God it did last Saturday for our car!