Monday, May 10, 2004
"Life's Not A Bitch, Life's A Beautiful Woman"
On the ride home to Cape Breton my cousin asked of me "Was it you that wrote off a car when you were 18?"
I had to think about it for a moment. I'm fully aware that writing off a car isn't something that just slips your mind. I wrote off one car or contributed to the writing off of one vehicle, however it wasn't mine nor was it my parents. I once rear ended a hatchback driven by what could only be described as a female version of Hans Moleman. Very little damage was done to the truck I was driving, but the rear end of hers was a hell of a lot more compact than it had been.
But I was over 20 when that happened, so it wasn't me that my cousin was referring to. I thought about it for a little while longer. Stories of my brother's daring while driving when he was in high school were legendary so much that when I graduated to high school (albeit a different high school) a number of years after him, people were still exchanging stories about him. I could never tell if they were in awe of him or just plain shocked. Despite my brother's risky driving, he never once flipped or rolled a car. I remember he once struck a rock while driving his new ten speed on a construction site and ended up splitting open his head. That's the only vehicle he ever flipped or rolled.
I thought about it a little longer and I remembered that my sister once flipped the family vehicle when I was 12. She was on the way to the ski hill and the roads were incredibly icy. I was already at the ski hill, my father had driven my brother and I out earlier that day. My brother's friend, who I really looked up to at the point in my life because he had a reputation as being an asshole, came up to me at the ski hill and informed me what had happened. After ascertaining that she wasn't dead and hadn't sustained life threatening injuries, I looked at my brother's friend and laughed and said "What a stupid bitch."
It's odd how easily those words spilled out of my mouth. You can produce, you can tag you can write, you can produce, but you can never make words merely physical constructs. You can just suddenly turn those sounds tangible. You can't eat your words the moment the exit your mouth, swallow them quickly, force them down your throat (sideways if you must), wash them down with a glass of water, and digest, thus erasing them from existence.
"No, I never wrote off a car."
On the ride home to Cape Breton my cousin asked of me "Was it you that wrote off a car when you were 18?"
I had to think about it for a moment. I'm fully aware that writing off a car isn't something that just slips your mind. I wrote off one car or contributed to the writing off of one vehicle, however it wasn't mine nor was it my parents. I once rear ended a hatchback driven by what could only be described as a female version of Hans Moleman. Very little damage was done to the truck I was driving, but the rear end of hers was a hell of a lot more compact than it had been.
But I was over 20 when that happened, so it wasn't me that my cousin was referring to. I thought about it for a little while longer. Stories of my brother's daring while driving when he was in high school were legendary so much that when I graduated to high school (albeit a different high school) a number of years after him, people were still exchanging stories about him. I could never tell if they were in awe of him or just plain shocked. Despite my brother's risky driving, he never once flipped or rolled a car. I remember he once struck a rock while driving his new ten speed on a construction site and ended up splitting open his head. That's the only vehicle he ever flipped or rolled.
I thought about it a little longer and I remembered that my sister once flipped the family vehicle when I was 12. She was on the way to the ski hill and the roads were incredibly icy. I was already at the ski hill, my father had driven my brother and I out earlier that day. My brother's friend, who I really looked up to at the point in my life because he had a reputation as being an asshole, came up to me at the ski hill and informed me what had happened. After ascertaining that she wasn't dead and hadn't sustained life threatening injuries, I looked at my brother's friend and laughed and said "What a stupid bitch."
It's odd how easily those words spilled out of my mouth. You can produce, you can tag you can write, you can produce, but you can never make words merely physical constructs. You can just suddenly turn those sounds tangible. You can't eat your words the moment the exit your mouth, swallow them quickly, force them down your throat (sideways if you must), wash them down with a glass of water, and digest, thus erasing them from existence.
"No, I never wrote off a car."
# posted by Die Brucke @ 7:46 PM 
