Crappy Cars

Like many good things in life, it happened both on purpose and by accident. I consider it a side effect of being a father, more than anything.

After years of car-free bliss, riding the bus where I had to, my (now ex) wife told me it was time to have a car. What with the baby on the way and all the running around like scared gophers that goes with it, something had to happen. Like many of her announcements, it came with a plan – did I mention we aren’t married anymore? This plan involved a friend with a 1985 Escort that had been parked for a while. The deal was this – $100 if I could get it running. And, in about a half an hour, I did (ignition wires were shot, is all).

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snafu

The word “snafu” entered our language in the Army during WWII. Apparently, the origin came from an encoder that translated English into five letter blocks of code. Some men at the Army base in San Louis Obispo started to think about what they might mean, and SNAFU became “Situation Normal, All Fucked Up”.

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J.S. Bach

The surest sign that I am running a frenzied pace of doing too many things at once is that I find myself feeling trapped in my car. I prefer to walk when I can, since the pace is metered out one step at a time, allowing me to digest it no faster than I make it happen. Time and space pass in a sensible way when you are walking, but in a car they zoom by at a rate that requires anyone to ignore the details.

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I-35W Bridge

Imagine the terror of plummeting 63 feet into the Mississippi for a moment. The bridge underneath you has given you a few moments of warning as it pitched to one side, and then you are suspended in the air before that sickening splash. The water comes in as you know this is it. If you are conscious, you probably have only enough time to panic as you start to realize this is the end.

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Heat

The heat of August is pooling around us, forcing us to swim more than walk though its heaviness. Every day this goes on is a bit more oppressive than the last, each push past the open door into the thickness a new struggle. Someday, soon, there will be a thunderstorm to wring out the atmosphere like a towel. But not yet.

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