Do you ever get the feeling you’re playing straight-man in some kind of higher level comedy? I have Two examples:
I’m with a group of people in a Long distance race-car gathering. We’re in a strange town, it’s dark, and we’re fumbling backwards through the map to find our way back to the Hotel after a good dinner at a local’s house. About a third of the way back to the hotel, I find the jalapeño poppers from earlier in the evening have had enough of me.
Through whatever cruel twist of fate, I’m in a two seat sportscar, with my mom, and we’re trying to find the destination, under the gun as it were.
Naturally, the side streets aren’t well lit. And several of them run parallel.
oh god…that did NOT feel good.
“Mom, we need to hurry.”
There’s 6 or 7 cars in the group, with no leader…wandering cats in the night. I grip the steeringwheel tighter as other muscles grab other things tighter. I disctinctly feel part of my innards reconfigure to aid the little green southwestern grenades on their way.
“Mom, we REALLY need to hurry, where’s the next turn?”
I look to my left, down an intersection, and see taillights of one of our members…they turned left. The next block over, I turn left. Dead End. Two cars follow me down the street.
We execute an abortive 9 point turn to get everybody turned about. I’m DESPERATELY hoping I don’t perform an embarrasing bodily function…in the car…next to my mother. GLURG-bubble-bubble-bubble.
We tear down a street that looks like the road to the hotel, but not exactly like the road to the hotel. Mom’s telling me to pull up to the foyer and leave the car, she’ll take care of it.
The road looks like the right road because it is, we’re just coming from the opposite direction (at slightly more than the speed limit), I see the hotel, I pull rapidly into the parking lot
SPEED BUMP!
I haul on the brakes and ease the car over the bump, knowing that if it didn’t damage the car, the movement would most assuredly damage my underwear. Jalapeño poppers…what a freeking sadistic name.
Pull the car up, throw it in park, and duck waddle through the door. In my most nonchalant James Bond voice, I ask the attendant where the bathroom is.
“It’s across the main floor, on the other side of the restaurant.”
(picture that sliding change of perspective thingy they use in movies…only the other side of the main floor now looks like it’s 300 miles away. glurg.
James Bond never duckwaddled. And I never thought you could duckwaddle as fast as I did. I’m pretty sure I left stuff marks on the carpet.
There’s a freaking ‘Wet Floor’ (Caution!, Cuidado!, Achtung!) near the entrance to the bathrooms. crap crap crap crap.
In the first small consession of the night, the Lady’s room is being disinfected. I rush as best as I can into the Mens room, unzipping as I’m barely though the door, lean into the stall, spin around, drop, and exploseively decompress. sigh.
Just after the right pause for effect the automatic deodorant spritzer goes “pshhhht!”
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I’m in the same car. I’d just put it back together after a transmission rebuild, and adding a tranny cooler to handle the added demands the racing mods create. Again, it’s dusk. I take the car around the block, top off the fluids, take it a little LONGER around the block, everything looks fine, I get it on the road and drive a couple of miles. Everything looks good, but I shouldn’t stray too far. Not on the inaugural run. I turn down a side street to make a u-turn, and the irresponsible part of me stands a little harder on the gas than I really should. The car responds admirably well. I giggle and signal to get back on the main road back to the house.
In the dark between two street lights, I see a little moisture on the windshield. Hmm, I didn’t think it looked like rain, perhaps I drove through a sprinkler. In the light, I see that only the right half of the windshield is wet. (@#()@#*%*!) I'm still a good 200 yards from where I can get the car off the road. I can see smoke billowing out the passenger wheel well. (@#(()!)(#()*@()!!!) I lose third gear, and put the car in neutral, hoping against hope that this $800 repair didn’t just blow up in 4 miles.
More smoke. I’m desperately trying to remember how flammable transmission fluid is. I hope two things: If it catches fire, that I can get out of the car, and I hope the fucker burns to the ground so I don’t have to decide what to do with a lame horse.
I’ve reached an intersection with a gas station and coast the last little bit up to the pump. I pop the hood and get out. As I lift the hood, the smoke wafts out like an overly theatrical magic trick. The engine compartment looks bright and shiney, like someone had armor-alled it for show. Except that if they’d done that, they wouldn’t have armoralled the exhaust pipes. That’d be stupid.
I can see where the badly hoseclamped hose popped off the fitting.
I can see the great big crimson pool of life’s blood leaking out from underneath. Gil Grissom would comment that death was from exsanguination. Viewers at home would exclaim “Duh!”
And nearby, at the Irish pub, the harmonious tones of a bagpipe start playing “Amazing Grace”.
I didn’t find it very funny at the time.