Man Calling Roadside Assistance Glad His Father Didn’t Live To See This

MAROONED on the side of the M9 motorway somewhere around the Carlow exit awaiting the arrival of a mechanic to take a look at his stricken automobile, Waterford man Eamon O’Carroll has tearfully expressed how he would be ‘walking home in shame’ by this stage if his father was still alive.

O’Carroll, 37, was on his way up to Dublin to meet his new boyfriend for a day out in the city when the gearbox of his 12-reg Corsa suddenly became ‘a box of neutrals’, prompting him to limp to the side of the road and avail of the 24-hour roadside assistance provided by his insurance company, something that ‘would have killed’ his dad, if he wasn’t already dead.

“Dad was grand with the whole gay thing, never phased him. But not being able to strip down and reassemble a gearbox on the side of the road, in the pissing rain? That, he couldn’t forgive,” O’Carroll told us as the roadside assistance lorry winched the irreparable car onto the tow bed.

“The man never brought a car to a garage in his life, and he certainly never asked anyone for help with fixing one. I remember we drove from Cork home to Waterford with a stop sign acting as a fourth wheel one day when we were kids. Another time, he miraculously turned water into diesel to bring us to Kilkenny after we ran out on the side of the road. So to see his son having to call for help for something as trivial as a collapsed gearbox would have gotten me written out of the will for sure”.

O’Carroll then refused a lift back to Waterford with the tow truck, instead staying behind to whittle a new car out of rocks and leaves, just as his father taught him.