Words and Thoughts: Jinbei Sheriff ’97
Hello again, alleged readers. So there I am, cruising down the freeway, in the hot hot sun, not a care in the world. Wednesday mid-morning, going in the opposite direction of the direction of work. My foot to the floor on the gas pedal of my white ‘97 Jinbei Haise, squeezing out all 58 miles per hour that the inline-four will cough up when asked nicely. AM radio permanently stuck just off to the side of 1520kHz, half static blaring. Truly the perfect Wednesday.
Perfect until Jackwagon McGee shows up out of nowhere in his souped-up Ford with all these stickers and crap everywhere.
Look, it’s all fine and well if you want to deface your back window with a stick figure family sticker set to let people know how prolifically you reproduce; or slap a Tinker Bell decal on your bumper to let people know that you can’t be pigeonholed into a one dimensional identity, rather you are both tacky and dumb. Go ahead, express yourself, I wish I could! Stickers don’t adhere well to rust unfortunately.
But this guy, and his shiny Ford… Sooooooo many stickers. He comes up out of nowhere behind me absolutely blasting some heinous screechy music that, try as I might, could not be drowned out no matter how much I turned up my static. Then he flips on his party lights. Get outta here man.
From what I can tell he was some kinda Omar Sheriff fan, and boy howdy did he want the world to know it. Side of the car, front of the car, back of the car… big gaudy “Sheriff” stickers. Like buddy, we get it, Dr. Zhivago was a great movie. And it’s hard to upstage ol’ Streisand there, but we all know Funny Girl should have been called Really Good Actor Guy (Omar Sheriff), and probably was going to be called that if Barbara wasn’t probably being so Barbara about it all.
But Omar’s #1 fan over here was way too much for me… the Sheriff stickers, the god-awful music that literally everyone around you has to listen to, and now this quite frankly dangerous and distracting light show… no thanks!
I slow down to let this doof-lord by and he slows down. OK, I get it, you want everybody to look at your cool Ford. So I speed up. Guess what, this dweeb speeds up too! So, like now it’s becoming oddly personal. My mind starts racing, right, like “What beef does the the presumed president of the Omar Sheriff Fan Club want with me?”
Oh man, did I maybe forget that I signed up for the Club and then not pay my dues? I’m pretty sure I would’ve remembered signing up for the Club, and I don’t think I did.
Maybe I cut this guy off a few miles back when I was trying to get the school bus to race with me? Maybe he was impressed by how I ended up totally gapping that bus?
I wasn’t about to find out. People are crazy! I spent the next twenty minutes trying to lose this guy! I finally did lose him when I got off the freeway and found a school zone. From what I can tell, most cars can’t go more than 30mph in a school zone. Not the ol’ Jinbei though… it’ll still do 58!
