4 posts tagged “cars”

A friend recently found a high school graduation video.  It was made at the all-city sanctioned after-party.

He sent a copy to me with instructions not to watch it... at least not sober.

Also not to watch it alone... or with anyone else present.

Much earlier versions of us are both in it. 

Recognizable and yet not. 

There are many others remembered and forgotten.

Opening myself up to a good mocking, I allowed the wife to watch it with me.

Egad, the fashion made that easy! 

I don't know what was worse, the kids trying to be couture or the kids who were trying to look like they didn't care.

What I remember of the after-high-school-graduation party is fragmented.  Having the video for cues helped a bit.

It was one of those affairs sponsored by local businesses at the county fairground, to let the seniors blow off steam in a controlled environment... and sober.

It was May.  Than means hot on the Sonora Desert, even at 10 PM.

The parking lot was soft dirt/sand.

The volume of just-graduated drivers and their guests stirred it up to a constant haze.

It stuck to the sweat on my arms, forehead, and neck.

I wasn't nervous.  It was just still that hot.

The nerves had all faded years before.

I was free of the school district now.

Also free of my classmates.

Now we could all strike out on our own.

I didn't need them, but I needed to be here, at this one last ritual passing.

I liked my chances of making it outside the structured educational environment.

I thought most of my friends had a good shot at it as well.

Some small bit of sick pleasure was derived from the foreknowledge that some of the always more-popular cliques would have almost no shot at all... and they didn't even know it yet.

They had already peaked in life.

To them this night was their crowning achievement.

To me, graduation meant that I could finally begin.

I remember going through the gate with my little "I'm a senior" ticket stub.

I remember trays of snack food set out for us.

There were relieved smiles everywhere.

Jokes and jokers.  Dancers and dancing.  Volleys of volleyball.  Dealers, chips, and cards.

There was sitting on bleachers and taking it all in.

Closure and moving beyond it all.

Throats grew hoarse, from the chalky sand drifting in the air, and from screaming until two in the morning.

Then we filed out, started our cars, and departed en masse from the last time that we would all be together.

The dust folded in like a hazy curtain falling.

On an odd day I still feel that chalky dust on my neck.

But you can't wipe the past off, it just grinds in like fine desert sand.

From the long lost pilot-episode of my life:
(Still shopping it around for a network)

Sub-Dude

The car, here, is out of place
Bicycles far more the pace.

Fried potato starch stains

We'd trade the use of Daniel's lion pack
For one flat wooden toothpick seat

Button-fly or zipper today?

We're shod with iron horshoes firm
To evict their cuckoos from his nest.

Light Emitting Diodes, all systems green on zeppelin.

A pizza in my pocket, nuked
The dog was hot and bunned

Frozen fruit hookah pipe-sicle treat

The burger's cow hammed the town
This cheese, it is not yours dear nun.

Pale cow, the rider is hooded

I sat all day and nigh fortnight
Before we came upon ourselves again

Hang-nail, torn, bleeding, quick

You were there and so was I
The future played us fair

A ring repaired, but not the One Ring.

Three sets to one we were not done
So in the car you rode uphill

Mmm, Buffalo-style onion rings, crispy

Duh dizzy bunny hopped limply
Fried out from the sun

Sister fingers, sister hand, close crate door again

But your car there was out of place
so pinched me I did do

Thought in head and key in lock

In a crowd that stank with sweat
On the bus did bounce.

Expunged, expelled, the sponge that failed

And bunny, she hobbled a corner round
There under wheels was flattened.

Well, wet my nose and wag my tail

Bicycles far more the pace.

It'll happen.  One day.  I will be a big, rock, star.
Could be as Groove Neuter, or the Swinging Dangles, or maybe even the Pixlettes.
And the kids will bounce and hop in their cars, in the bars, near and fars to these words that they aren't really listening to because they just like the beat, and the guitar, and its the trendy thing to listen to, before its completely forgotten:

SPF 45

Breezes, hot, blow

Softly she wakes

From death below

A pill she takes

Nostalgic undertow

To weaken her aches

Slip. Slap. Slip. Slap. Slough.

AAAAAAAAAaaaagggggggghhhhhhh!
 

Let it clink

Cubes

In my drink

Cubes

They never sink

Cubes

Helps me think

Cubes

Slip. Slap. Slip. Slap. Slurp.

AAAAAAAAAaaaagggggggghhhhhhh!

And it burns

In my eyes

And it burns

To hear her sighs

And it burns

To feel her thighs

And I burn

To meet her eyes
 

Slip. Slap. Slip. Slap. Sly.

AAAAAAAAAaaaagggggggghhhhhhh!

Erector set

Eight hundred pieces

Pneumatic action

Opposable thumbs

Weapon does not fire

Figures not included

Not actual size

Slip. Slap. Slip. Slap. Slop.

AAAAAAAAAaaaagggggggghhhhhhh!

Wind kicks up

She wakes, hard

Hardly

Hard

Hardly

Hard

And then she falls

Falls

Calls

Back to sleep.

Slip. Slap. Slip. Slap. Slept.

Aaaggghh-...

Or at least my credit card company thinks so.

Some background.

As the regular readers know, and are sick of hearing by now, we just moved.

My credit card company knew this too.

I called them the week before we moved with the new address.

Which is why it galls me that I caused a major backup at the local Target store here.

See, the credit card company fraud early detection unit had been monitoring my account.

The $200 plus I attempted to spend at Target was more than their nerves could take and they put a halt to my fraudulent ways.

The cashier was confused.  The lane manager was summoned.  Who summoned the shift manager.

All while the line grew to Star Wars Episode One opening week proportions.

The red phone was used.  All of us waited on hold.  The cashier interrogated me, by proxy, for the credit company.

The other two managers saw this as a training opportunity for him.

He saw it as an unnecessary delay in his lunch break.

Forms of ID were passed all around the group.

More questions were asked and answered.

Finally, I was handed back all my kit and told it was my turn to actually use the red phone.

I was immediately put on hold.

It was AC/DC, so you know, I was cool with it.

Much to the ire of the assembled tribes of Israel behind me in line, seeking exodus from the land of red and khaki retail oppression.

Then I was, very politely, interrogated as to what I had been doing and buying and staying, and traveling to, and gassing up and eating.

You see, all of these purchases for the last week were outside of my NORMAL spending zone and were not the types of purchases normally made.

There were lots of service station gas and food charges, and fast food restaurants, and motels, all within a short period of time and in a straight line away from my NORMAL spending zone.

It was almost exactly like the charges were following Interstate 75 down from Detroit to Cincinnati, with a layover in the night at Dayton, from there to I-71, around Louisville, then I-265 and 65, around and South, straight into Nashville, where there were more hotel and restaurant and gas charges.

And then, THEN, I had the nerve to go to Target and buy $200 plus of furnishings.

I was almost EXACTLY like I had moved from Detroit to Nashville, and taken two days to drive down, my wife in one car with the kids, and me in the truck with the two dogs, stopping for the night in Dayton, which is almost exactly the halfway point (just a little shy actually because we got a late start on day one with the movers).  And then spending another night in hotel in Nashville waiting for the movers to arrive, unload, and having gotten all that done, gone shopping for all the little things you don't move with you to your new house, when you're going to rent out your old house.

I got to explain all of this, in three-part harmony (with apology to Arlo Guthrie but the kids were getting vocal by this point), to the early fraud detection unit.

I also reminded them, that I had called them the previous week, to notify them that I was moving.

They had my old address, my new address, and they had the recent change on file as my last contact with them.

And yet, they needed me to connect the dots for them.

Hmm, all the bililng charges run in a straight line along the interstates from the old address to the new address, and then the day after they get there, they go shopping at the Target 2 miles from their new address.

Yeah, it all sounds really fishy to me, couldn't possibly make any sense of it.  We better freeze the account to make sure.

And yet I think of all the times that I've flown somewhere really random without telling the credit company, rung up really absurd and suspicious, even to me charges, and haven't heard a peep from them.

This one, this one actually made sense given that they knew I was moving.  I'm the one that told them.

Crisis resolved I was allowed to make my purchase and escape before the mob began line-dancing to the Achy-breaky.

Geesh.