gold car machine

It started off just right. My boys and teeny girl made me some delicious breakfast: cake batter pancakes, fresh fruit, and juice. mmm. After breakfast I hopped into our gold minivan (called gold-car-machine to create the illusion that our car is on par with a backhoe or other construction machine) to run an errand. On my way home, things got messy. A little genie lantern light in gold-car-machine started blinking. For all you car nerds, it’s the oil light. It then started beeping. Thoughts of the Jiffy Lube waiting room swirled in my head…hoping I wouldn’t have to use their bathroom again because it was kind of gross a few months ago. Anyway, beeping continued and within minutes the car was smoking. A lot.

I swerved over into a vacant spot on the side of the road as quickly as possible. about five feet away from this spot was a man and his tamale cart. Although he looked at the van in horror he didn’t move an inch. In the tamale cart game, once you’ve established your position, you do not budge. Tamale lovers need to come to you, or the whole system gets thrown out of wack. Apparently his calm demeanor didn’t impact any of my subsequent actions. I jumped out of the car like a raving lunatic. In those early minutes I pretty much thought the car was going to explode. I obviously watch much too much tv. That kind of stuff happens to Jack Bauer all the time; however it usually entails a bomb, rather than a cracked radiator. I was all hopped up on adrenaline – just like Jack – as I rushed around the corner and peeked back at the car, which now had neon green anti-freeze streaming from its underbelly (tamale cart guy holding steady). As you car nerds might have guessed, the car did not explode. And instead of some crafty plot twist that only Chloe O’Brien is aware of, a tow truck came and picked up the mini-van. In Ryder’s eyes nothing could have been cooler than seeing a photo of  gold-car-machine up on the tow truck. I may not have Jack Bauer’s cat-like reflexes, but man, can I be involved in a top notch car break down.