Honey put on that party dress

Yesterday morning I drove across town, to the place where hillbillies and the like build plywood houses for refuge against the bustling demonicity of The City, to drop my car off for repairs. I wouldn’t have chosen this particular body shop had it not been for my last experience with bumper replacement. A year and a half ago I let the insurance agent suggest/coerce me into going to XYZ body shop, the body shop that is run by my ex-employer. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, except the last time I saw my old boss I was screaming Fuck You and other obscenities. I also might have mentioned his tight pants, and that he might want to take his miniscule dick that he so loved showing off and put it in his ass. I was having a very bad day. And he deserved it.

There was nothing so awkward as running headlong into the aforementioned previous employer, because even though we both smiled and shook hands, there is no doubt in my mind that while I was thinking Coked up fucktard he was thinking Raging bitchface. I crossed my fingers and prayed that my Honda came back with a recognizable paint color and intact upholstery. It did, but still. I figured it was best to be on the safe side this time around.

Which is how I ended up among the cast of Deliverance in bumfuck Little Rock, waiting patiently in their trailer-turned-waiting room for Enterprise to make good on their commercials. Twenty minutes later I was greeted by Joe, my friendly car rental representative. Joe had obviously had a hard life, one that involved a lack of teeth-brushing and a possible head trauma.

During the fifteen minute drive back into town I was serenaded with none other than Joe’s highly deviated septum. I kept wondering if it was possible that he just couldn’t hear it, that steady stream of whistling air bringing oxygen to his ancient bloodstream and expelling germ-tainted nose breath into the confines of the vehicle. But there was no way possible, no way in hell, that he was oblivious to the ceaseless sound. People thirty miles away were turning their heads to the side and asking each other, “What’s that sound? Is it the wind?” NO. It’s just Joe and his whistling nose.

Joe also liked to make small talk, whereas I am much averse to the stuff. I thought I had finished with my polite overtures when I climbed into the van and nodded politely, asking him about his day. He responded in kind and we settled into, what I thought, was a peaceful silence. It’s a long drive back to town and there’s only so much chitchatting a girl can handle. But Joe wanted to make comments on everything, from the silvery purple color of a Cadillac to the possible conspiracy of five white sedans in a row on the interstate. He intimated that the sedans were probably with the FBI and on their way to some secret rendezvous. Only when Joe said it, it came out as randy-voos.

About halfway through the journey, Joe turned to me and asked if I was sulking. He thought he’d heard me sighing at some point and had probably mistaken my unconscious verbal expression of annoyance with general sulkiness. I haven no idea how he heard it over the 1820 Overture playing steadily from his nostrils, but he merely nodded his head sagely and asked how long she’d been hurt.

It took me a good five seconds to respond. And five seconds is a damn long time for car silence when someone is paying no attention to interstate and waiting breathlessly for your response. Only I hadn’t the damndest of clues what he was talking about. A ‘she’ had been hurt? And I knew about it?

Then I realized he was talking about my car, with its bumper hanging pathetically from the rear driver side. My car was a ‘she.’ This was news. So I told him it had been a week since the accident and ‘she’ would be fine. But of course Joe couldn’t leave it at that, he had to regale me with stories of his vehicularly challenged wife and her propensity to wreck his brand new truck, over and over and over.

To which my only response was, “Perhaps you should stop handing her the keys.”