First of all, it was the missus who left the little door open and then got too cute with the big yellow pole at the ATM machine. Then she tells me to fix it. How, I says. Use that imagination you're always boasting about, she says. Fine, I says, then five minutes later I says, There. What the hell is that, she says. I'm not driving with that stupid thing on my car. I hear the bus is good transportation, I retorts. Besides, she adds, That's my favorite Metallica disc. It's your damn car, I counters, And your broken fuel door. You fix it, I challenges. Thirty minutes of banging around the garage later, and cuss word combinations I never thought of before, she comes back in and admits, You win, but get a different CD, I can't give up my Kill 'Em All disc. So I start rummaging through her CDs. Every one I pull out she protests, No, not that one. I love that one. Even Go Go's discs and Oingo Boingo ones she hasn't played in decades. Finally I plucks out The Carpenters' Greatest Hits, Volume 3 (Volume 3, mind you) and she caterwauls, No, that will make me look so uncool. What, I questions. You know people are going to be looking to see what CD it is, she explains. I can't be driving around with a Carpenters disc taped on my car as a gas cap. People will think I'm a nerd. The car will keyed everywhere. And that Toto disc you so vehemently refused me to use, I protests, that's not going to get you car bombed in the hipper parts of town you cruise through? Use one of your discs, please, she whimpers. Well, that's the kind of question posed to me that can paralyze me for weeks, I ponders. Just what is the correct CD to tape to your car (yes, my spouse's car, but still, and I do drive it from time to time) to use as an ad hoc gas cap? Because she's right, I figures. People will be taking a peek to see what disc it is, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be caught, or let my other half be caught, sporting an uncool disc-as-gas-cap. Jesus, I hems and haws for hours, picking through my CD racks, conjuring all the permutations of having a Velvet Underground disc versus a Wire disc versus a Sun Ra disc versus a Doc Watson disc taped to the back of my wife's car. The onus of cool, I tell you. I can't recount the deliberations I ended up having with myself, for fear of lapsing into insanity. Suffice to say, two days of no sleep later I finally crossed the Rubicon and taped a Lightnin' Hopkins import, disc 3 of 4, onto the car. Whatever, she sighs.
Whatever. Three weeks later, I'm driving her car to get smokes. It's balmy out. 94 degrees. Sunny as hell. Pollutant Index way up. I'm stopped at a light, the sun beaming right down on the CD, sending off blinding reflections all over the intersection. And then, God strike me dead if I lies, one sun ray laser beam struck just right, and out from the gas tank comes Lightnin' singing "Automobile Blues." I got the coolest jerry-built car in the world. Thank God I didn't go with Oingo Boingo, I concludes.
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