. . . and what should never be

Tonight, my ears are bleeding. No blunt trauma. No earwigs. No. This was worse. And if you know me at all (and if you don’t know me by now, you will nevernevernever know me ooohoohoohwu) you know this now requires a story. Right, so, I was driving to the hospital (nota bene: ears not bleeding yet) to take Kim some dinner. So far, so good. Then I turn onto the long, picturesque drive that leads up to Children’s and Women’s Hospital, resplendent with tasteful landscaping and whimsical bronze statuary grotesquely appropriate for a hospital that deals with women and the tricycle-motors they periodically squeeze out in fits of bad judgment and poor taste in men. As I’m coasting along, a pain slammed simultaneously into both sides of my head with roughly the force one might expect to be produced by the collision of a moist, smallish planet and a bean burrito the size and shape of Michael Moore’s smug sense of self-importance traveling at exactly the speed of sound. For a sound it was. And by sound, I mean the squall a demon might make who has just inadvertently shut his scrotum up in his car door.

Mothers of small children should promptly usher them from the blog. In fact, mothers of small children have no business reading this particular blog. The child will be able to taste the misanthropy of my blog in her breast-milk for days should she read the sentence after next. You were warned.

My radio, in direct violation of all things good, decent, copasetic, and cool, broadcast Dolly Parton’s cover of “Stairway to Heaven.” Look, if your ears are experiencing sympathy-hemorrhaging, don’t be mad at me, I tried to warn you.
But that wasn’t all. As I’m sure you have already surmised, I was paralyzed by the inequity of what I was hearing. But my foretaste of perdition was not yet perfected. For before me was a Buick being driven by a geriatric masochist with nothing better to do than maliciously drive in front of me. Now, at the time I was behind the Buick, my speedometer was reading 4mph. That wouldn’t be such a big deal, except that I know for a fact that my speedometer is fast by 3.5mph. So there I was, being subjected to aural sodomy, trapped in my car, my flesh, my corporeal prison, behind a septuagenarian succubus, experiencing the sort of time-lapse torment usually experienced only during your required college public speaking class at 2:30PM, Friday afternoon. Oh, sure, you’re probably saying to yourself, “Uh, Mike, why didn’t you just pass her or change the channel, or both?” I pray you never have to understand why those two options were denied me. I dream of a world where men are powerful enough to push car stereo buttons while yet in the presence of the desecration of Led Zeppelin classics. I aspire to own a car that can accelerate, pass a Buick, and slow back down before the next speed bump. But until Dolly Parton repents and I make enough bank to trade my Honda Civic for an Acura NSX, we’re all just gonna have to pray a little harder on the nights I carry a sack of Taco Bell to Kimmy.