Clair McFarland: We Bought A Minivan With No Melted Sour Patch Kids In It

True to his word, The Husband sold off our 2007 GMC Yukon and started shopping for a minivan.

He upgraded me from the category of “woman you merely marry and bless with four children,” to the category of “woman for whom you buy a minivan” — all because I came to understand baseball.

I trusted his judgment and let him handle the salesmen, specs and prices on his own.

I’m terrible at that stuff. I’m the type who, upon receiving a charred steak at a restaurant, would rather grind and froth the ashes into my gullet like a reverse volcano than let the waiter know.

So, I focused on my work, the laundry, our four sons and learning to play ukelele. All the super important stuff.

“I think I found a steal,” said The Husband of a primer-grey minivan with a black interior and supposedly no flaws despite being 3 years old.

“That’s nice dear.”

“But it’s in Utah,” he said.

I strummed a line from “Rip Tide” on my little ukelele, marveling at the way the meaning of a syllable sinks deeper into one’s soul if it falls on a chord change.

I didn’t think about the logistics. If the minivan was in Utah, The Husband would need a ride. He couldn’t hitchhike there.

He almost caught a ride when his brother took a family trip to Lagoon, but the dealership was several miles south of there and The Husband didn’t want to prolong his brother’s trip to the theme park. Then he tried getting his other brother to take him. And his friend. And his other friend. None of that worked.  

Desperate, he turned to me.

“You’ve got to take a day off,” he said.

I have a rough time with that. News never sleeps, and neither does the verb circus that the adjective carnies keep running in my head.

Sure, I can break up the controlled chaos of the news by going for a run, cooking a meal or strumming a song with hippie overtones strong enough to expel my oldest son from the room. But I can’t ever really escape it. It’s a part of me now, like a tattoo — or a tapeworm.

Somehow, The Husband convinced me to go to Salt Lake City, eat at a Cheesecake Factory and ride an electric scooter.

I fell in love with the e-scooter. I made The Husband ride through the city for two hours. We learned about state-run liquor stores, the past-tense verb “squoze” and all sorts of other Utah-isms.

In the morning, we drove south to buy a minivan.

It sure was primer grey, but I didn’t mind that. I like minivans’ sliding doors and aerodynamic noses. Yeehaw!

Prompted by a salesman’s flourish, I shinnied into the back seat. It smelled like melted Sour Patch Kids.

The Husband sniffed.

I sniffed.

I started hunting for those melted Sour Patch Kids. Figured I could pry them up with a garden spade, peroxide whatever they’ve been ruminating on and scrub the spot raw.

“You, uh, didn’t tell me the prior owners had a dog,” said The Husband.

A dog? Where did The Husband get the idea there’d been a dog? Do dogs eat Sour Patch Kids? Is that a dog staple, I wondered?

The Husband looked over the scuffed interior, the scratched and torn upholstery. He sniffed again.

“So, was there no way to get the dog pee out?” he asked.

Reality snapped into place. The stench was dog pee! That’s why I couldn’t find the hidden lump of Sour Patch Kids. There wasn’t one.

To his credit, the salesman didn’t flinch under The Husband’s gaze, which is more than some home-invading pigeons and I can say.

The salesman explained that he has no sense of smell. That cleared it up.

“Well, babe,” I chirped. “Want me to scrub the carpet and see if I can’t mend this upholstery –”

The Husband shot me the stink-eye. I should have known better than to bumble into bargainer’s no-man’s land. But he agreed to take the minivan for a test drive.

We ambled 20 feet through the parking lot, took one left turn and that vehicle died on the spot.

Turns out, it wasn’t broken. It was only out of gas. But The Husband took it for a sign, and he got us out of there.

We drove north to Salt Lake City and bought a newer minivan from an Ed Sheeran-looking salesman who didn’t think I was rude for retreating into the nether corner of his dealership’s Wi-Fi zone to crank out a news story while the men talked business.

The minivan we bought is beautiful, and white. It has one of those push-button ignitions that freak me out and some other electrical gizmos that make me think if it’s ever possessed — or hacked — it’s going to zoom me off to a brainwashing lab and turn me into a Taylor Swift fan.

But other than that, it’s perfect. So, nobody gets to eat any Sour Patch Kids in it.  

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.