I’m in a horrible mood, and have been all week. I thought today was going to be different, because I don’t have to go to work, and also got a lot of sleep. These are rarities, which usually put a spring in my step.
Indeed, I woke up in a decent mood. I put half-a-pot of coffee on to brew, pulled my phone off its charger, and let Andy out for a quick pee. But I’m waiting on a couple of important emails, and neither arrived while I snoozed. So, that set the tone.
Then the younger boy came home from school, and would barely talk to me. I tried, but he was having none of it. It’s pretty standard with him; he’s detached and aloof, like many 14 year olds. But it pissed me off. I hadn’t seen him since Sunday, and he just got on the computer and tuned me out.
So I went to the library, where I’m writing this update. I’ll try to stop my whining HERE. I apologize. I’m well on my way to becoming one of those old complaining bastards at Denny’s. All that’s missing is a white Sea World cap.
A few days ago I left for work, and almost immediately the Check Engine light came on in my car. I’d never even seen it before, and it freaked me out a little. I went straight to the garage we use, the guy hooked it up to an apparatus, and told me I have two potential problems.
One is no big deal: the gas cap wasn’t on very tight, and some air got into the tank. The older boy had put gas in it the night before, and didn’t properly replace the cap.
However, the dude also said I might have an issue with the catalytic converter. None of it made any sense to me, but it went something like this: “Blah blah blah blah $750.”
I talked to my dad, who was a mechanic, and he wasn’t buying it. And I spoke to a guy at Toyota, who also wasn’t buying it. Both said it was almost certainly not a problem with the catalytic converter. So, I feel a lot better. The light hasn’t come back on, and I’ve been driving it for several days. Hopefully it was just the gas cap. I’m not taking any further action, until I see that terrible light again.
Toney defended the boy. She said, “Don’t yell at him, for not tightening the gas cap.” Like I’m some tyrant. Hell, I wasn’t even planning to mention it to him.
But it got me to thinking about all the times I got yelled at, because of some dumbass action I took in one of my parents’ cars. Here are a few:
One day I jumped into my mother’s Monte Carlo, which was parked inside our garage. I hit the automatic door opener, waited for it to go up, and backed straight into my dad’s car, which was parked on the driveway. In one smooth motion I wrecked both our vehicles. There was some yelling.
Another time I was out drinking with Bill, and we stopped to buy gas. I pumped a few dollars-worth into the tank, and drove off without replacing the cap. I think I left it sitting on top of the pump. My dad discovered it a few days later, and wasn’t happy. How could I be mad at my own son, for doing something not nearly as stoopid as I’d done?
A couple of years later, my dad found a condom wrapper in the back of his station wagon (who said I’m not a genuine West Virginian?!). He didn’t say anything to me about it, but told me he’d cleaned up the car, and asked me not to get it dirty. Then, when I opened the driver’s door, there was the wrapper. He’d left it on the seat, for my benefit. Just so I knew he knew… I couldn’t look him in the eye for a month.
I also got the thing buried to the frame in mud one night (it’s a long story), and had to call a wrecker to pull it out. I tried to spray it off, but didn’t do a very good job. There was some more yelling.
And my girlfriend and I got caught having sex in the Monte Carlo, by a couple of Dunbar cops. They shined a flashlight into the backseat, while we were fully engaged. They asked for my ID, said, “Hey, are you John Kay’s boy?!” and started snickering. They let us go, but I have no doubt my dad was told about it within ten minutes. He knew all those guys. My girlfriend and I went to her house, silent and shell-shocked. We sat on her couch for about five minutes, staring straight ahead. Then we both started laughing, and couldn’t stop. My parents never said a word about it.
There are undoubtedly a dozen more stories I could add to this sad line-up, but I’m going to turn it over to you folks now. In the comments section, please tell us your tales of getting into trouble, while driving your parents’ cars. Hopefully I’m not alone?
And I’m going to call it a day, my friends.
See you again soon.
Now playing in the bunker
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Erste!
We tried many different parking places only to be interrupted by police officers, state troopers, and the occasional park ranger. We found the best place was down the street from an ex-girlfriend.
Drove my father’s car twice in my life. First time, when I took my driver’s test. His was automatic, mine was standard, Second time, I was 49. I had to run something to the hospital for my mother, he didn’t have time to do it. He told me before I was sixteen, you want to learn to drive, buy a car, get your own insurance. He told me that he had to work for his and I had to work for mine. That was it,
There was that time I almost lost a friend out the back window of the Pontiac ‘woody’ station wagon on the after-school dropoff run, but that’s nothing compared to the time with the fire extinguisher and those kids throwing snowballs.
Neither of which occurred in my folks’ cars, but the speeding ticket while going to GIRL SCOUTS? That was a mean move, copper.
Dang.
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I rarely drove my parents’ cars. Like eeyoresmama said: earn it for yourself. I rode my bike to my job at McDonald’s until I had saved $250, and blew it on a beat-up old Ford Falcon. The first year’s insurance cost more than the purchase price of the car.
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Being the amateur wrencher in the house, the worst I did was make the parents car go faster and shred tires. =-) Fortuenatly all fender benders involved other people hitting the car.
I grew up just north of NYC and my mom never had a car. To this day, she still takes the bus to work.
My parents moved us to “the country” when I was in high school, and moved back to NYC once all the kids were gone, selling the car in the process. That was around 1985, and they have not had a car since then. Just as well – my dad is not able to drive anymore, and my mom, while technically able, hates it and is not good at it. I don’t know if she even still has a license.
There is a lot to be said for retiring to a big city: everything is right there, and you don’t need a car. Personally I like driving and having a car, which is one of the reasons I don’t live in NYC.
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Hey you guys – where are you from? My parents did the same exact thing. My mother still lives in NYC and I’m up here in the burbs? I grew up in Mount vernon, NY until it was too costly to send us all to private school, then my parents moved us to Katonah in 1975. When Pop retired in ’92 they fled back to NYC.
Yonkers, NY
Almost nobody in my family drives because it’s easier to take a train or bus.
I grew up in Brooklyn – Park Slope, later Carroll Gardens. We moved to Great Barrington, Mass. when I was 15. The parents moved back to Brooklyn when we were all out of the house, then later bought a co-op in the East Village. For a while the apartment next to them was the home of one Joey Ramone, but that ended when he died. His estate still owns the place.
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Driving my Dad’s Plymouth Satellite on a snowy night going to work I stopped at a light and saw a car speeding up to my ass end. The old lady driving slammed on the brakes but it was too late.
Her bumper latched onto mine as it rode over it. She then threw her car in reverse and tore the bumper right off the car.
I threw it in the back seat sticking out the window and drove to work and back home that way. I went to bed and got up when my Dad yanked my ass out of the bed and onto the floor. He was pissed and didn’t care to hear that it wasn’t my fault.
“Fully engaged…..”. Heh…….
I was one lucky little bastard having gotten my driver’s license in 1980, age 16, dad had a 1976 white-on-white Lincoln Town Car sitting in the garage with about 600 miles on it. It just sat there getting dusty.
At the time, dad had a construction company and owned a fleet of Chevy pick-up trucks. It seems like he bought another new one every 3 months, he drove the new one, and passed off the barely used one to one of the crew. Mom hated that huge Lincoln and I loved it.
I would Turtle Wax that beast and put Armor-All on everything else. Once my dad realized that I kept that car looking like showroom new, it was all mine.
I thought I was the head pimp my high school. I think I cried when he traded it for the newer downsized smaller, piece of shit underpowered Lincolns they built in the mid-80’s.
The only thing worse than getting interupted by the cops is getting interupted by your girlfriends mother. Many times….Oh, the horror…..
Especially if the interruption is of the coital variety?
Try getting interrupted by the older brother who is the same age as you while banging on a bale of hay with two horse watching.
Why do you ask, Two Horse Watching?
Doesn’t everyone do that?
I call it giving her the Ol’ Pat Day.
I managed to smash my grandfathers car into an embankment, spin a 360 throwing the car onto the passenger side (not quite rolled over), blew a tire and ground our way down the hill with sparks flying. We crawled out of the driver’s side door and rolled the car back onto 4 wheels by pushing it — adrenaline does funny things. We changed the tire and then took it to the car wash to try to make it look a little better.
Didn’t work.
Damned thing still ran fine, but it looked like someone took a belt sander to the entire passenger side. My Grandfather wasn’t pleased.
Jeff’s lucky his dad wasn’t a farmer as well, or he would have gotten a raft of shit after the horse stuck his head in the car window while he and his gal were “parked” and “engaged”. From a previous update. Heh
When my check engine light comes on, I disconnect the battery for a minute. That usually takes care of it.
If it comes back on, I put some paper over it.
I give nary a shit about O2 sensors, of knock filters, or if the calibrator is on the fritz. If there is something serious enough to tend to, eith my gauges will show me or I’ll see something exiting the vehicle that shouldn’t be.
Like a black guy.
Most auto parts stores will (for free) attach the meter to it and turn the light off.
To the black guy? Sounds racist.
Like a boss.
From time to time my Check Engine light comes on. I almost didn’t pass inspection last year. Ithas to do withthe gas tank so now I try not to go under 1/4 tank. And I alternate with premium gas every 4th fill up.
I can’t remember doing anything stupid in my father’s car but he did give me some big as 1977 Oldsmobile when I was in betwen cars. Running it into an embankment would have been an improvement for that gas guzzling boat. The night it did finally go kablooey, I just spent a small fortune filling the gas tank. That was in 1987.
😐
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Xt1b6gz6sYc#!
Nice hair. Finger-waggin’ beeyotch.
I’m going to say “this tape” is from the mid-, maybe early 1990s.
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I am sofa king wee todd id. Did not read the caption on the video before posting. I do, however, stand by my beeyotch remark.
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I borrowed the car one night to go on a double date. The girl in the back seat had a nose bleed…. all over the baby blue velour. Would you rather try to explain a condom wrapper or a pint of blood smeared about the place?
And don’t feel bad about backing into the car in the driveway. My mother has done it twice and my mother-in-law has done it once. Then again, they’re little old ladies……
I wish. I’m lucky I was allowed to ride in Dad’s precious Studebaker (Google is your friend, kids).
Turned 18 and one month later I was in the USAF. My driver’s test was administered in San Angelo, TX by an honest-to-God Texas Ranger in the base chaplain’s borrowed Oldsmobile. Didn’t slip behind the wheel again for three more years. True story.
Once in SE Asia I had the dubious pleasure of riding in an Air Police jeep on a number of occasions as they hauled my drunken ass back to my squadron area. Sometimes they even slowed down as they ejected me from the vehicle. Good times.
I was a model prisoner. Never banged up anything of my two wardens. I took Drivers-Ed in summer school (1969) so Dad was off the hook for “teaching” me as he had had enough with my sister three years earlier. The only time I drove the corrections vehicle was on my driver’s test. After that I had limited parole to drive my own 1955 Pontiac Star Chief and what went on in Star Chief….stayed in Star Chief. About a year later I had earned and was granted a full pardon and have ever since continued a life on the run.
LIMP RIST
CANT TWST
MAKE FIST
It’s good to see a man from West Virginia take life by the balls and get fired ten seconds into his new job as a newscaster. Who the fuck wants to work in North Dakota anyway?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_uX1RczgQA&feature=player_embedded
jtb
My ‘check engine’ light came on a few years ago. I took my truck to a garage to be fixed. The light came back on shortly after so I took it back. They said there was nothing wrong. Took my truck to another garage and they “fixed” it, too. A little while later my nephew got the light turned off. I hit a bump and the damn thing came back on. It’s been on ever since. About 5 years now…..and my truck runs fine.
I took a job as a project manager for a construction company. Right now we’re remodeling Wal-Marts at night. This site, and you people, help keep me sane. I check in during my weird hours and Jeff and co. Always come through.
Thank you. You are, perhaps, the best group of assrabbits ever to come together. Love you guys.