“It’s just starting to piss me off,” spat Tyler. He’d had a bad day crunching numbers and by now his eyes looked out of focus to me, but I couldn’t tell if that was due to the eight White Russians he’d had or the dozen Guinness in my belly. Actually, most of those beers had made it to the urinal by now and returning from my last trip to the bathroom, I noticed a Ford Mustang had taken a stool at the bar to the right of my seat. Tyler, seated in the stool to my left glared at the car while it tried to get an Amstel.
After I had sat down, our conversation became increasingly interrupted with Tyler’s exclaimations of disapproval for the Ford. It was an old model, ’93 or ’94, two-tone dull gray and Jersey blue. The tires and wheel wells still had some road salt from last weeks storm.
“Did it bump you on the way in?” I asked T.
“No…it’s an ASSHOLE!” he said loudly over my shoulder. The car heard and gave him a dirty look. The eye contact tipped my drunken friend. “You’re a no good rusty piece of shit!”
Before Tyler finished the sentance, as smooth and fast as a sports car half his age, the Mustang punched him in the eye—socked him 1950’s style in a way that would have made it’s daddy proud.
The blow quieted the bar like one loud beat of a snare drum and every one was surprised to see Tyler on the ground, especially Tyler. I glanced up from him to see the car headed out the door with a irate woman bartender yelling after him. Another patron and I put Tyler on a stool and inspected the damage. His brow had already swollen to the size of half a racket ball.
I left him and returned shortly with a bag of frozen peas from the grocer next door. While he iced his eye, I asked him why he picked a fight with a 1-ton stickshift. “I just hate those cars, man. See when I was young, one of them drove up on my sidewalk and crushed my bicycle. Ever since then, I… no wait, that was my neighbor’s Sentra. I just really loved that bike.”
“Well, now you can hate Ford Mustangs, too, because that one sure kicked your ass,” I told him as I bought the next round. Colleen just burped through the whole adventure.
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Thanks to Erica for the pic on the right.
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When I woke-up this morning, the perceived length of this first week back made me think today couldn’t possibly feel more like Friday unless it was freakin’ Friday. Or Freaky Friday. I certainly know what I would do if I was trapped in Jamie Lee Curtis’s body and it wouldn’t involve computer programming, which is what I am doing today. Unfortunately, it is Wednesday so that means we’ve got two more days until the weekend and we aren’t suddenly blessed with a great set of middle-age knockers to enjoy.
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SOTD: I like the cat in the pic halfway down in this article about an unlucky bird.