Metal

I’m sitting in the lobby of a car maintenance shop early on a Saturday morning.  I’m tired, zapped up on coffee, and since it’s the weekend, I smell like a cig.  Much to the chagrin of the lady sitting in the laptop booth next to me, presumably (and, kind of, hopefully).  While driving down the highway an hour earlier, listening to that nasty moan of metal on metal that indicates I’m about to spend a bunch of money  on new brakes, I spotted a car on the side of the highway.  It was in a ditch, its tail end pointed towards the woods, and the front of the car facing the highway, but also pointing slightly in the opposite direction than it would have been coming from. Damnit. Now seriously, how in the hell did it end up that way?  I shouldn’t have cared.  It has nothing to do with me.  But it sure pissed me off.  And it reminded me of how much I hate cars

Cars are kind of like humans.  They are much too complicated.  They require way too much ongoing maintenance.  And they allow too much opportunity for stupid people to find themselves in a ditch, sideways-facing, with their nose pointing at me as I drive by, tired, zapped up on coffee, and smelling like a cig.

But then again…

After getting pounded in the driver’s side of my old car a couple years ago by some idiot barreling through a red light, and experiencing the air bags inflate in milliseconds and punch me in the face, saving me from eating my steering wheel, well…well I was reminded that there is some pretty badass technology in a car, and some badass scientists behind the creation of one, turning their dials and pulling their levers and eyeballing their test tubes and doing that sciencey shit that they do.  It’s a shame all those brainiacs aren’t focused on upgrading the car into something less lame, like a jetpack. Or a flying carpet.  ANYTHING without wheels.  But then I think about that car in the ditch, its nose pointed in the direction of oncoming highway traffic as if to call out to each passerby in its imbecile voice, “Morning to ya! Hello!  Howdy doody!  I’m backwards aren’t I?” and I understand that maybe it’s not the cars that are in serious need of an upgrade.

Last weekend I was sitting shotgun in my brother’s car as we pulled up to a stop light on an Atlanta street. I was rambling aimlessly about something unnecessary, likely staring at my hands, the dashboard, the floor mats – anything other than the world around me – when my brother interrupted with a shout.  “They’re going to run into each other!”  I glanced up through the windshield to see two cars slowing accelerating through the now-green light – one car going straight, the other car (which should have been going straight) angling towards the next lane.  The lane with the other car in it.  Both drivers oblivious to the oncoming collision. They were a mere second away from accelerating into each other when they both finally snapped out of their respective zombie trances and slammed on their respective brakes, just barely avoiding a wreck.  And then…

Nothing.

Nothing happened. They just remained there.  Frozen.  Neither party in either car knew what to do next.  They were mentally incapable of processing their current situation and coming up with a workable plan to get out of it. Such as, umm, start moving again.  So they just remained there. Frozen in time.  Paralyzed.

My brother Chris, who has clearly spent a good many years outside of Atlanta, as demonstrated by his competent driving skills and general ability to react to things happening, was undetered.  He just swung the steering wheel to the left, hooked the car around the strange static scene before us, and continued on his way.  As the other two cars continued to remain where they were.  Remarkably still.

As we drove on, we monitored the progress, or lack thereof, of those two cars as they grew smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. It’s entirely possible that they’re still in that same spot now, a week later.

We took that opportunity to recollect on past car wrecks of our youth.  Not the morbid or unhappy ones, but rather those comic situations that inevitably occur when you take a naive teenager whose concept of consequence has not yet fully evolved, and you give him his first taste of freedom by putting him in a two ton square of metal that goes fast and that he didn’t pay for, and you send him on his way.  Best of luck, young dumb inexperienced driver!  We laughed about those early days when your buddy first got his license and you and your pals piled into his parents’ car and laughed as he crushed down the accelerator and sped and sped and sped until coming upon a turn in the road or a highway exit, and being unable to navigate the turn at such a high speed, went soaring off the road into the grassy median, popping the tires, or smashing into a tree.  And then having to trek to a pay phone to call daddy.  We laughed about the “One Cone Jones” incident in high school, where our buddy Leo came cruising into the parking lot in his Scirocco, Freaky leaning out the passenger window holding an orange road-side cone while yelling “ONE CONE JOOOOONNNNESSS!”, until Leo made a hard left to swing into a parking space and proceeded to smash into the side of our buddy’s Prelude.  I recollected on Chris’s high school spring break road trip to Florida when he managed to get into, not one, but two car wrecks, before finally puttering into Panama City with the back window of the Civic hatchback completely gone, a flapping sheet of plastic in its place.  Chris did manage to peel the Fishbone sticker from the broken shards of the former back window and stick it onto the new plastic one. Priorities.

Quick side note – the new lady sitting next to me in the car shop’s laptop lobby is asleep. Lightly snoring. Shit. I love Atlanta, but man, do I hate Atlanta.

I thought of one other auto accident antecdote and asked Chris if he’d heard it.  He hadn’t, and so I proceeded to tell him the tale.  It went something like this:

One friday night back in high school a group of friends and I were hanging around in hJon’s parents’ basement.  There were two factions of the group there that night – the Dungeons & Dragons players and the non-Dungeons and Dragons players.  Of the former were me, hJon, and Leo, and we were really hankering to play some damn D&D.  But we were faced with a problem. The others. There was no doubt that if we were going to pull out our dice and character sheets, the non-D&Ders were going to just get in the way.  They would cramp our role-playing style, for sure, insisting that we engage in some other lame activity like playing pool or talking to girls or something.  So we decided to hatch a plan, an elaborate ruse to get rid of the naysayers so we could be free to start kicking some serious goblin ass.  We set the plan in motion.  We announced to the gang that the night was a bust, and that we would all be heading back to our own houses. Leo, who didn’t have a car at the time (perhaps it was in the shop, post-”One Cone Jones”?), asked one of the non-D&Ders if he could hitch a ride home.  He hopped in the fellow’s car, and they pulled out of the driveway,  Leo knowing that in 30 minutes, hJon and I would drive over to his house, pick him up, secretly bring him back to hJon’s house, and Dungeons and Dragons would commence.

Note that this was the early nineties, the pre-cell phone days.  The days when, if you made plans to meet up with someone, you just had to have blind faith that all parties could successfully execute the plan.  And if not, well, you weren’t going to find out until you got there.

hJon and I waited the requisite thirty minutes – ample time for Leo to get dropped off and say goodbye, and then head inside and pretend like he planned to stay there -  and we got in the John-Mobile and drove off.  Ten minutes later as we neared the entrance to Leo’s neighborhood we were greeted by the sight of something that looked all too familiar.

Our non-D&D-playing buddy’s car.

Parked against the curb in front of the neighborhood sign.

Or, smashed against the curb, rather.

He and Leo standing outside of the car, staring down at the passenger side tire that was bent up into the undercarriage, nearly perpendicular to its preferred position.   They had taken the turn too fast or swerved to miss an oncoming car or some detail that I can’t recall, and had skidded sideways into the elevated concrete sewer base that extended off the curb.

Our plan had hit a snag!

Abort!

No, we couldn’t.  There was no turning back – we’d been spotted.  So instead we pulled up to the mangled car and the two shaken dudes and attempted our best “Fancy meeting you here!”   We verified that neither friend was hurt, and then told them we’d be right back – just had to turn the car around.  So hJon drove into the neighborhood entrance and pulled up into the nearest driveway.  He put the car in reverse, with the intention of backing the car out in the opposite direction from whence he came – a standard “turn around” maneuver executed flawlessly by countless humans for countless decades.

He did the backing out part just fine.

But he turned the steering wheel the wrong way, and as we crossed the threshold of the driveway into the street, we found ourselves facing the direction that we had originally been heading.  Instead of pulling into the driveway, backing out and turning around, we had only done the first two – pulled into the driveway and backed out.  hJon, his teenage brain unable to comprehend why he was facing the direction he had just been facing seconds earlier instead of facing the opposite direction where our friends were standing, momentarily lost control of the situation.  And thus neglected to remind himself to take his foot off the gas.

And so we continued moving forward.  Away from our friends.

And towards the mailbox.

We were greeted by the sound of metal meeting metal as the passenger side door and the mailbox made contact.  And the mailbox proceeded to tear across the side of the car as the car continued its forward progress.

SCCCCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE….

hJon finally took his foot off the gas.  He looked over at me.

“Oops.”

And there we sat.   Motionless.  The two of us, in that car.  With the mangled side panel.  Next to the mangled mailbox.  Which stood ten yards from the mangled car pressed up against the curb, and those two guys who stood next to it, staring over at us, both confused and disgusted.

There was to be no Dungeons and Dragons on that night…

This was the story I recounted to Chris as we continued on our way through the Atlanta streets, those two cars stuck in the middle of the intersection, with the drivers of each car both waiting for the other to take initiative – to do something, anything – and thus each contributing to a perfect stasis… those two cars were now becoming just another funny memory to us.  Just like the memory of those two cars parked at the entrance to my buddy’s neighborhood so many years ago, and those four kids who just stood there – just remained there – motionless.  Unsure of what to do next.

Of how to get things moving forward again.

Like the car in the ditch on the side of the highway.

Like the woman snoring next to me in the car shop lobby.

Like the piercing howls emanating from my brakes, screaming at me to pull over, man!  Just pull over!

Pull over.

Get out.

And walk away from the damn car.