It Just Had to Be

I've had quite a bout of bad luck with cars. Someday I'll make a list.

But right now, I'm more worried about finding a new vehicle to blow up. Doll went with me today to try out a couple of cars we saw over the weekend.

"Can I help you?" Mr. Dealer asked.

"Hi. We've been looking at that silver car over there."

Mr. Dealer went on to tell us about the power train something or other and how long they last with proper care, where the car came from and other details to which I probably should have paid attention.

"We haven't had to do any body work on the car. There was no hail damage."

I laughed at this. With my luck, it wouldn't be long before the car would have some damage.

"We did have to fix one of the power windows . . ."

I laughed again.

Doll tried to explain my laughter. "She wasn't able to go through drive-thrus for years because her window was broken."

Mr. Dealer was starting to realize I'm a bit of a car destroyer. Which is probably why he sounded a little nervous when I asked if I could drive it.

"Uh . . . sure! Yeah! Wait . . . how old are you?"

"Twenty-eight," I lied as I smiled at Doll. I love getting asked for my ID!

"All right! Twenty-one is the magic number for the insurance company! We'll get the car ready for you!"

Doll and I jumped in and headed off to drive in circles. I concentrated on not crashing while she played with everything. She turned on the air conditioner and even tested the heater. She played with the power locks and pumped up the stereo volume. Then she rolled down her window.

"Good idea!" I said as I tried the driver side window. It rolled down and back up easily. Then I tried the back windows.

The passenger back window wouldn't go down at all.

It doesn't look like my streak of bad luck is going to be ending anytime soon!

It's Getting Harder and Harder

When I was in drivers' education, I had a goofy educator.

It seems all drivers' ed teachers are. It must be a requirement. Or they're the only people crazy enough to teach teenagers how to drive.

When the dreaded day of parallel parking came, I was pretty nervous. When you live in Kansas, the opportunity to parallel park doesn't present itself too often so I hadn't had much practice.

We met at the designated parking lot and saw two beater cars parked with a small space between them.

"We have to try to park there?" one of my driving companions asked.

Our teacher decided to show us how it was done and we all packed into the car with the yellow warning signs all over it.

We were half paying attention as he talked us through the motions. Then he hit the curb. And bumped the car behind us.

Good teachin' coach!

We didn't say a word back then. We didn't even laugh. Maybe he did it on purpose to ease our stress. The three of us were slow but flawless in our execution.

Since then,I think I have parallel parked twice. I mean really parallel parked. Where I've tried to cram myself in between two cars.

I'd rather walk a mile than try.

Which is why I've been very interested in the Lexus Advanced Parking Guidance System.

On the commercials, it looks like some super mega car that parks itself.

Which it does, but it turns out it's not as easy as it seems. There's a lot of instructions to give and did they mention you have to find a space six and a half feet longer than the car.

Well, maybe it's not the miracle car I had hoped for, but it's still pretty snazzy.

So who wants to buy me one?

And Carjack an Ice Cream Truck

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a news story about a carjacking at a Dillon's in Wichita.

As the reporter stood in front of the store, I said to Jacque, "Hey I think that's the one by where I used to work!"

It turns out I was right, and I knew the security guard who got hit.

I was talking to Casey about it the next day. "That could've been me! I could've been robbed!"

"Nah. They'd look at your car and say 'Man I don't want no crappy Buick!'"

"But the car he jacked was a Buick!"

Took You from Dirt Bikes to Hondas

You're all such kind, caring souls.

I can tell you're all concerned about my state of mind and about poor Michael getting slammed into my car door by the emails you sent asking what "Get on the Bus" is.

I guess I must be rubbing off on all of you.

"GOTB" is another car game developed while at KU. All the best ideas for car games originate on that campus.

Whenever we drove somewhere on campus, we were most likely going to pass by a bus stop. Usually, there was at least one person satnding there.

While passing by one such bus stop, Raw growled "Get on the bus!"

I laughed. She laughed. It turned into a game.

See, the idea is that our vehicle is the bus. And we're telling them to get on the bus. But we don't actually stop.

Get it?

Yeah. I'm telling you we were easily amused. We had to be. We were poor.

Hell, we're still poor and this stuff will always amuse us!

I Slit the Line

I've been a big baby here and crying my heart out to you about my devastation over losing a friend so suddenly. So what do I get emails about?

"What's 'No Gas/No Brake?'"

I feel your love.

No Gas/No Brake is possibly the greatest game involving a car, ever.¹ The only thing you have to do is pretend you've run out of gas and have no brakes.

Now, you don't play the game just anywhere. It's silly and dangerous to play on open roads.

The game is most effective when picking someone up in a parking lot.

While at KU, all my friends lived in the dorms or apartments. We played No Gas/No Brake a lot.

Since I was usually driving, I was the biggest instigator. "No Gas/ No Brake?" I would ask as we pulled into the lot.

We would pull up to the curb and wait impatiently for the victim to come out. We would roll down all the windows and open the door then let the car go, yelling "No Gas/ No Brake!"

Michael seemed to be the victim a lot. He was also the grumpiest about it. He would stand at the curb with his arms crossed until we stopped.

But we never stopped.

One night, I swear we played the game for twenty minutes. Michael's dorm had the best slope to the parking lot. The car could go forever.

We were yelling and laughing hysterically until he finally decided to take the jump.

The door shut on him as he landed in the backseat, on top of two passengers.

"OW!" He shouted angrily as we all fell silent. "See? This is why I hate this stupid game!"

Did we apologize? Did we stop to make sure he was okay?

Of course not. We just broke out into laughter again.

Oh, the eveil things that amuse me!


¹"Get on the Bus" is pretty good, too!