Words and Thoughts: Fish Sticks, NASCAR, and the Midnight Goose
Hello again, alleged readers! You all remember my one neighbor with the bird clock in his garage? If you don’t remember my neighbor, you probably at least remember the clock, right? Every hour it plays the sound of a different bird. Very much worth the five easy payments of $19.99, with the certificate of authenticity included. Anyway, that’s the neighbor whose car I listen to satellite radio in when he’s not using the car; usually between the hours of 11pm and 6am.
This past Monday night, or Tuesday morning really, I was getting all set to listen to the NASCAR Channel’s midnight rebroadcast of the 1997 Primestar 500 from Atlanta Motor Speedway. I had microwaved three boxes of fish sticks, and pulled my finest two-liter of Diet Mountain Dew out of the mini fridge.
It was going to be an excellent evening.
Then I got to my neighbor’s driveway, where the car always is. However, it was not there. Can you imagine my horror when I discovered that my neighbor’s car had been stolen? There I was, fish sticks in one hand, Mountain Dew in the other, Mark Martin hat on head, and slack jawed expression of disbelief on face. His car, and its radio… gone!
I know he always locks his car, because he insists on playing the “make Stav use a coat hanger to unlock the car” game. But here we were, unable to play the “make Stav use a coat hanger to unlock the car” game because the car had been heisted in broad darkness.
Obviously, I would need to let him know! But it was late, and I didn’t want to startle him by ringing his doorbell. I knew I couldn’t get his attention by making loud bird noises in his front yard, because he’d probably just think it was the clock. And on top of that, the midnight bird is the owl, and I can’t do a good owl impression. I’m really good at goose noises though, but goose is the five o’clock bird. And if I made goose noises at midnight, he might think he time travelled, and that would probably be even more jarring than me ringing his doorbell at this hour.
I figured I’d be able to find something attention getting, but not startling, in his garage. However, I need you to brace yourself for what comes next. Brace, alleged readers!
As I was crawling into his garage window, I found out that his car wasn’t stolen, it was in his garage! Are you kidding me!? The whole time, just sitting there in the garage.
So I climbed back out of the garage, got my fish sticks, Mountain Dew, and Mark Martin hat; then climbed back into the garage, then got in the car, then connected the three wires in the steering column, and guess what: “NO SIGNAL”.
Apparently, his garage is satellite radio proof. By this time, I was at risk of missing the radio description of the pre-race flyover, and that would be an absolute disaster. I know how to get the radio to turn on, but I have no idea how to actually start the car without the keys; and on repeated occasions he has, in various ways, informed me that I cannot have his car keys.
It is under the greatest pressure though that we achieve our greatest accomplishments. Acting on pure animal instinct, driven by the unmitigated fear of missing the flyover, and God forbid the pace lap, I got out of the car, got under the car, chewed clean through the brake lines, got back out from under the car, still drooling brake fluid, and calmly opened the garage door. Triumph was at hand. A gentle nudge was all it took to coax the car out of the garage. Then it rolled quietly down the driveway and halfway across the neighbor’s lawn across the street. But you know where the car wasn’t? In the fortress of radio solitude that is my neighbor’s garage apparently. My Monday night / Tuesday morning was saved!
Mark Martin led nine laps and finished sixth.
