The Galactic Misadventures of Capatin Jester and the Stationary Garage Door.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, I found out today that my newfound addiction to the “Homeworld” computer game (real-time space strategy), may be affecting my life a little bit too much.

After a lengthy Saturday morning of playing said game, I had to drive myself to a piano lesson. This is routine stuff, and my head was still thinking space-strategy, so my mind started improvising.

No longer was I Jester, 16 year-old piano apprentice. Nay, I had become Captain Jester of the United Earth Alliance Army. No longer was I driving my mom’s Subaru station wagon (affectionately called the “tope bullet”), I was now piloting the Flagship Cruiser “HMS Legacy”. Already I could hear the voices of my imaginary crew as I climbed into the bridge.

“Ignition, started! Beginning primary drive system! Seat readjusted, and we’re ready to go!”
“Captain, shouldn’t you adjust the rear view display?”
“Damn the rear view mirror, Skipper, we’re running short on time! Time is too much of an essence on this mission to dawdle! Now, prepare to back out of the hanger!”
“Yes, sir!”

<CRASH>

Immeadiately, sirens began going off in my head. (AWOOGA! AWOOGA!) Emergency lights flashed. (Flash, flash!) And I banged my head off the steering wheel as I realized that in my fervor, I had neglected to open the garage door. (Thud, thud!)

Getting out of the car, I realized that the bottom panel of the garage door was at an angle that it definitely shouldn’t have been at. BUT, I also realized that my parents weren’t home, and all I had to do was fix it, sneaky-like. On further introspection, I realized that the damage was pretty bad, and I hadn’t the first clue how to fix the garage door.

My brain then cycled to Plan B: possible excuses.

“No, Mom, you don’t understand! The car just backed itself up!” No good, need another.

“This guy just ran in with a sledgehammer, and started shouting about how he hated all garage doors everywhere! I think he’s still on the loose!” Still not effective enough.

However, as I began developing a fool-proof story involving a hobo and a rampaging elephant, I saw my dad walking around the corner of the street. Defeated, I realized that the feces had hit the air conditioner, and it was time to fess up. But, dammit, if I was gonna go out, I was gonna go out in style. I walked up to him, preparing a tangent about how garage doors are really not a necessary part of the house anyway, and he could go to hell if he was mad. However, I realized once I got to him that I was never good at confrontation.

“Errrrrrrr…Hi Dad.”
“Why aren’t you at your piano lesson?”
“Uhmmmmmmmmm…Car problems?”

(The moral of this story, kiddies, is that Jester is a moron, and that Jester’s parents will now haunt him with this story for the rest of his life. Oh, and that game addictions are nothing to be trifled with)

2

You sad, sad, sad little man.

Oh Jesterfish. All I can say is this:

:cool:

3

Jester is 16???

:eek:

4

Oh Jester…um I mean Captain, sir! (No honestly, I’m not laughing that hard…yet…)

Don’t worry it could be worse, the son of my choir director did a similar thing…only he was outside driving forward… I laughed much harder at him. (He was in the choir at the time we learned of this. Eighty people learning from your dad about you being an absolute moron, with you in the room. He’s a great guy, a bit lost sometimes, but took it well.)

The very fun part of the story was my director filing the insurance claim. They told the insurance people that “a car had run into the garage.” The insuance people said okay and gave them money to fix said garage. The director used this as an example to answer the question asked. “They never asked whose car or who was driving, they asked what happened and we answered.”

It was a riot, I assure you.

5

Jester, this is easily sorted, just reload from a pre-garage-door-incident saved game. :slight_smile:

6

:slight_smile:snort Jester-HAHAHA! Tell you what, (hehehe) I won’t tell anyone at school (FYI: the ‘captain’ snort & I go way back), but I will from now on refer to you as Cap’ain Jest.:smiley: ROTFL! (literally)

7

At least all that you ran into was the garage door at the ripe old age of 16 years.

I, on the other hand, at the ripe old age of 16 years, pulled out in front of a loaded school bus in my dad’s pickup. He came by about 5 minutes after it happened and drove right by, looking at me all the way. Never stopped. He knew I had to give him the keys to the truck. I just had to fess up. No getting around it. So I says to him “Well, you see dad, this school bus just jumped right out of the forest and bit the truck.”

Six months later, I bought my own car and I could drive again. :smiley:

8

My 18 year old brother has been denying the big dent in the side of the family car for 2 years now. It just happened to appear within the 8 hours he had the car at school. He swears it was a manufacturers default and the side caved itself in.

9

Oh man, Jester ask a few Dopers, they’ll tell ya I had this same problem 3 weeks back. . .
Just get me a sledgehammer, and I’ll be over to fix it in a few hours. . .
Tripler
Really. A heavy sledge.

10

See, this is why I don’t park my car in the garage.

Well, that and the fact that one of the bays has Dad’s '57 Chevy and the other is filled with furniture.

11

Careful, Tripler, I might just take you up on that offer. Though I may just ask you to “fix” my dad, who has taken every possible opportunity since then to bring this up.

Spinnie, I’ve got dirt on you too, so I wouldn’t try bringing this up at school. Besides, I’m gonna tell everybody anyway.

And Mermaid, yup, you’ve gotta yungun on your hands. You sound suprised.

Medea’s Child, messiah, tubagirl, cheezit, et all, I have spent the last few minutes laughing heartily (On the floor) at your stories. I thank you for that.

12

Jester, I have to say, welcome to the “I Hit Only Stationary Objects” Club.

All of the follwing incidents happened in Mom’s Ford LTD (known in the family as ‘the big boat’) within five years of getting my driver’s license at 16. Note: I am not making these up; my family can verify them:

  1. Backed into a neighbor’s mailbox while delivering papers at 4:30 am. Bent mailbox post, dad re-welded him a new one.
    1A) One week later, backed the car out of the same neighbor’s driveway, missed the edge of the driveway, and backed into the drainage ditch.

  2. Ran over a (now ex-)boyfriend’s metal trash can, and got the car stuck ON the garbage can (lifted the wheels off the ground). I bought his mom a new garbage can.

  3. Backed up out of the driveway, forgetting my best friend’s new Colt Vista (small car) was parked right behind me (driving really big 70s-model monster car).

My thoughts-
“Okay, I’ll impress my friends (best friend, our boyfirends and another guy) with my skill and ease of backing out of the driveway into a busy road.”
“Radio off - no distractions.”
“Foot on brake.”
“Shift car into reverse.”
“Foot off brake, easy on the gas pedal.”
BAM!
“Shit. Forgot to turn and look behind me.”

Damn near sent the car out into the middle of the street. Amazingly, only a small scratch on the Colt’s bumper. Lots of “Remember when…” mileage out of this one from family and friends.

  1. Leaving my guitar lesson, I exited the music store driveway too sharply and scraped the side of the LTD against a telephone pole (took off the faux chrome strip). Left the strip off - car was showing a lot of wear and tear, but still is sisters favorite “RW” story.

  2. Demolished a box of plastic squeeze lemons that were sitting in the middle of the NYS Thruway - the underside of the car smelled like lemons for a couple of days. (They had fallen off a transport truck; we pulled over and picked up four more boxes on the side of the road.)

Thanks for making my day, and after awhile, you’ll be able to laugh at your own stories too.

13

Jester, just what dirt do you have on me? (besides the incident with Dave last year, which everyone (except the Teeming Millions) already knows)

14

Thanks alot, now I want to know.

15

In my current car, I have yet to have an accident, but it has the front bumper bar replaced 3 times to far…

The reason? My sister. She has run into a post in a car park, into the back of another car and has had another car clip her (only touching the bumper). The funniest thing was that in the last case, she had just spent 2 hours putting a new bumper bar onto my car as a present & was driving to deliver it back to me!

16

I wish to state for the record that I have ** never ** laid so much as a finger on this young, young man. Had I known his true age, I would never used such suggestive language in his presence either.

boy is my face red

:mad:

17

Yeesh. While I never hit anything as a kid, I am still dealing with Jester at 16. I thought he was MY age! (35).
Now I find out I could be his dad! (Although I don’t think I ever met his mom…)
Lad seems to have an advanced wit. :slight_smile:

Jes, you never really said what yer 'rents reaction to the crunch was…Other than having it as something to guilt you with.

18

Just last month, my daughter’s bf got his license, along with the use of an old van. As he was leaving one evening, I said (jokingly, I swear): “Don’t hit my car!”
Naturally, he backed into the left door of my Aerostar, casuing over $1K in damage.
I know it was an accident, due entirely to his inexperience, and the lad was properly contrite. I felt bad for him - his insurance doubled and his mom was more than a bit ticked off. He’s only just earning back “discretionary driving” priviledges.
On the plus side, he’s very careful every time he gets in a car now…

19

So, what did you have to do to earn the title of “Capatin” Jester? I’ve never heard that rank before.

I had a full frontal collision with my mom once. I used to drive her huge-amous long bed, crew cab Chevy to and from school, and she tooled around in her skanky ol’ minivan.

Well, the road to the school parking lot was bad, and so most people drove on the wrong side to avoid the potholes. One day I was zoomin into school, bouncin down the road, and took the turn into the parking lot, as was the custom, on the wrong side. Right as I cleared the turn, the sun was perfect in the sky, and nailed me right in the eyes. Quickly I reached up and pulled the visor down, just in time to see a gray minivan about 10 feet from my bumper.

I nailed the brakes as quick as I could, but naturally she had a headstart on me. Anyway, we were both going slow enough that, with the brakes, we simply bounced off each other and rolled back about five feet.

My face was burning red and I knew she was going to tear into me, as she tapped on my window. I rolled it down, grimacing, and she busted up laughing, telling me not to worry, she wasn’t mad, she saw the sun hit my eyes, and she knew the wrong side of the road custom, and besides, it was ALL worth it for the look on my face when I put the visor down and saw the van.

Grrr. Moms can be just so damned nice and understanding sometimes! I just don’t get it.

I still get made fun of for it, though.

–Tim

20

I ran into a tree once. I had just parked in the library’s parking lot, had opened my door, and was leaning over to pick up books on the seat next to me. I learned an important lesson that day…make sure the car actually is in park before you do other stuff. That library seemed to have it in for our car, though. One other time, my dad had just parked, opened the door, and was ready to get out, and a car pulled into the parking space next to him, hitting the open door. So, Jester, from one Captain to another, don’t worry…stuff like that happens.