The World According to "Aaarrgh!"

Wednesday, seeing as the car did not go into reverse, I decided to drive “my” van.  (I recently bought a used 1987 Ford van to go along with the 1987 Chevy van we already own.  Since the “new” one is rather quirky, she doesn’t drive it.  So, we now have “his” and “hers” vans.)  Seeing as it was trying to rain, and the Ford was doing one of those quirky electrical things where none of the gages work, I decided to turn on the wipers to make sure that they were working, just in case.  (I had a Datsun once where the wipers did not turn on, and I had to drive with my head hanging out the window and using one hand to keep the windshield clear.)  They were, but I noticed that one of the blades looked kind of funny.  I stopped to look at it, and discovered that it was barely connected, which meant that I couldn’t use the wipers until I could get to O’Reillys and buy a new blade, a mere fifteen minutes away.  Luckily, it only just spit.  I got my new wiper blade, put it on, popped in Styx’s “Paradise Theater”, and was on my merry way.

 
Here I was just cruising along and belting out “The Best Of Times” with Dennis DeYoung.  No sooner did the song end then “Kablam!”  I hurriedly pulled over, and got out to assess the damage.  The friggin’ Firestone blew.  (The other three tires are Cooper.)  Fortunately, it was on the passenger side, where at least I would be somewhat protected from traffic.  Nothing worse than having a driver’s side tire blow, and your butt hanging out into traffic that is whizzing by at 70 plus.  Having experienced several blowouts, I knew the routine, and proceeded to get out the jack and wrench.  Of course, the jack was a wee bit rusty, and rather difficult to move.  Let’s just put it this way—it would have been easier for me to have just lifted the van with my arms than it was to use that rusty jack.  After beginning to sweat profusely in the 180 degree heat with a relative humidity of 500 percent, I ditched the trademark hat.  It was cloudy, so I wasn’t really concerned about my baldness getting sunburned.

 
Ten more minutes of heavy sweating, and off went the shirt, as I didn’t want to get my good work shirt all dirty.  Ten more minutes and finally, I was able to free the flat tire.  Hooray!  Now I just got to jack it up a little more, put the spare on, tighten everything up, and I am out of here!

 
Not so fast!  Just a hair from where I needed to be to get the spare on, the jack decided that it was tired and wasn’t going to jack anymore.  I begged.  I pleaded.  I wept.  I yelled.  I called that jack every name in the book.  Nothing.  I tried with all my might to get it to move, but all I got for my efforts was a bent jack handle.  There I sat, on the side of the road, unable to do anything, at the mercy of a jacked jack with a bent handle.  I decided that the best course of action was to wait it out—I am, after all, a patient man.  While waiting for the jack to decide it wants to help, I returned a phone call to my boss.

 
“Where are you?”

“On the side of the road.  The Firestone blew, and the jack is rusted and jammed.”

“Oh.  When are you going to be in?”

 
Not quite the response I was looking for.  I was kind of hoping for something along the lines of “Do you need help?”  No offer of help came.  Just a question, and a clinical one at that.

 
“I’ll be in when I am done getting the spare on.”

“Ok.  Make it quick.”

 
Realizing that I was going to have to take the jack on by myself, and that I would look rather foolish letting a jack get the better of me, I decided to talk to it drill-sargeant to private.

 
“What kind of a maggot are you?  You’re a pretty pathetic jack!  You’re an embarrassment to jacks everywhere!  What are you, chicken?”

 
And then it started moving.  I don’t know whether what I had said had made a difference to the jack or not, all that I know is that the jack started moving.  After another fifteen very sweaty minutes, I finally got the spare on!  Hooray!

 
Then the jack had its final say.  It refused to go back down.  Somehow, I managed to pry it out from underneath the van axle.  I threw it in the back, still extended, and decided that I was going to get that jack to go down if it took me all day.  I went over to the shop, stuck it in a vise, squirted it with so much oil that a Saudi prince sent me a personal thank you note for using his product, and began turning, watching it retract e-v-e-r  s-o-o-o-o  s-l-o-w-l-y.  Success!  Don’t jack with me, jack…..Then, to show who really won, I went out and bought one of those cool floor jacks that makes the cool “Whoosshhh!” sound when they go back down.

One thing that happens when you have experienced some of the “bizarre coincidences” that I have (like phone calls from the past when your phone is disconnected, renegade cows, possessed plumbing, disconnected fuel lines, dead cars that are alive, death threats, etc.), is a heightened sense of awareness (or perhaps it is paranoia).  This heightened sense of awareness can also make one a bit jumpy.

Because my job requires that I spend much of my day in the field, I have a company car to drive during the day.  When I leave work every night, I drive that car out to the company facility that is closest to my house (which is still an hour away, instead of an hour and fifteen minutes).  There, I switch vehicles to my personal vehicle, which takes all of two minutes.

Recently (subsequent to the death threat and the mysteriously detached fuel line) when I was switching vehicles at the end of another tiring day, I heard a pop.  Being tired, my mind wasn’t exactly sharp (it was so dull, you couldn’t even cut melted butter with it), so it took what seemed like an eternity for me to contemplate what it was.  Was it someone shooting off a leftover firecracker?  Was it a car with a backfire problem?  Was it merely a delusion resulting from fatigued, in which case there really wasn’t any noise at all?  After pondering for a bit, I did what all intelligent people do when they are confronted with something new and unknown – I ignored it.  If I pretend it doesn’t exist, then it doesn’t.

As soon as I convinced myself that the noise did not exist, and went back to my task of transferring all my junk from one car to another, I heard it again.  Pop!  That one was followed in rapid succession by several more:  Pop!  Pop! Pop!  Then my mind finally figured it out—it was gunfire!  Was someone firing at me?  Was this the end?  My mind started thinking about all of the things that I had wanted to do but had never done, either because the opportunity never presented itself or I was too afraid of consequences to do.

I started crouching behind the car, hoping that my stalker, whoever he or she was, was a bad shot and would not succeed in terminating my existence on Earth.  I got into my car, started it, and drove away, hoping the whole time that I would live to tell the tale.  Driving off the lot, and anxiously looking around hoping to find whoever it was that wanted me gone, I remembered something about the place where I parked, and instantly knew, that this time at least, my stalker wasn’t trying to take me out.

The lot where I park is next to a rifle range.  Of course if the stalker were at the rifle range….

I took my station wagon into the mechanic a few weeks back to get a new head gasket.  After taking the motor apart, the mechanic called and told me he was not going to waste my money replacing the gasket (which is in the neighborhood of $1500), as the heads were toast.  In other words, the motor had a meltdown and I needed a new one.  The mechanic graciously towed the car for me the ten miles back to the house and up the hill to the upper pasture, where it was laid to rest next to the barn, with its motor parts in a box.  This sucker is dead, or at least I thought.
 
Later that day, I was mowing the upper pasture.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the wagon’s taillights flash.  What the?  Surely it must be a trick of the light.  After all, it was getting close to sundown, and the wagon was parked in such a way that the sunlight could reflect off of the taillights back to my eyeballs, making it seem as the lights were on.  That must be what it is, I deluded myself, just a trick of the light.  The car is dead!
 
Having convinced myself that it was merely a reflection of the setting sun, I continued with my task.  Then I saw the lights flash again!  What the?  Given that I was not in the same position as I had been the last time I saw the phenomenon, I started to wonder.  Obviously, it is NOT a trick of the sunlight, I told myself.  Then it hit me—the boys must be playing in the wagon and hitting the brake pedal.  Yes, that is it.  I saw the light flash a few more times, and hollered at the boys to get out of the car.  Seeing the lights flash a few more times, I decided that I was either being ignored or was too far away to be heard, so I needed to go to the car and tell them up close.  I deviated from my mowing path and circled around back by the barn, hollering at the boys as I approached.  Much to my shock, I discovered that the car was empty!  Yet the darned lights kept flashing!  What the?
 
It was like the car was talking to me.  As I was sitting on the mower, looking back at the car that I thought was dead, I though I heard a voice talking to me.  “Why are you letting me die?”, the voice asked.  “Wasn’t I a good car?  Didn’t we go a lot of places together?”  Then the voice became demonstrative and full of despair.  “I don’t want to die!  I’m only nine; I’m too young to die!”
 
By this time, I had stopped mowing, and was just sitting there on the mower staring at the taillights of this supposedly dead car repeatedly flash.  By this time, it was starting to creep me out a bit.  My mind was racing.  “Holy crud!  It’s Christine!”, I thought.  “This car is possessed, and I will be next!”  So I did what any guy would do in the presence of evil—I went to it.  I not only went to it, I climbed in, not knowing what would be next.  Would I end up like one of those dumb ass characters in the horror movies I like to make fun of?  I can’t explain what possessed me to do what I did next, all I can say is I did.  I looked at the steering column, and that is when I saw it out of the corner of my eye.  The emergency flashers had been left on from the tow.
 
So much for the cool supernatural X-Files explanation!