The Manliest Day of the Year

March 23, 2014.Reading time 5 minutes.

Cue the Led Zep, let loose some fragrant belches, drag your nose across your sleeve, and get ready to scratch something! It’s Car Day, YES! The manliness day of the year that doesn’t involve a chainsaw. YES! Line ‘em up – three cars, three oil changes and a brake job. YES! Can you just feel the testosterone surging?

I felt it yesterday – a perfect Saturday for Car Day. I drove to the auto parts store to get my supplies and surround myself with other manly men. I didn’t shower, I wanted some manstink. I plopped brake supplies and three jugs of motor oil on the counter, grunted a few times, and swapped tales of bravado with the snaggle-toothed clerk. Yes, a day for men, indeed.

I love working on cars but there are only about four things left I can do on today’s automobiles. If anything else is wrong, I can only raise the hood and say, “hmmmm” before calling a tow truck. But on Car Day, I get to use my limited knowledge (aided by YouTube) to be a master mechanic. I refuse wash my hands after. Even though Car Day plus one is Sunday, I leave the black gunk under my nails. When I shake the preacher’s hand, he’ll know: ‘That’s a car guy.’ Oh yeah.

I started with my truck, affectionately called the Blue Pearl. After I drained it and changed the filter, I checked three times to make sure the plug was re-installed. I’m very diligent to check ever since the unfortunate day I poured ten quarts straight through the engine and onto the pavement. Yes, the plug was in this time. Car one complete.

Our van, Russell’s oil change went quickly. Next was Kevin, our oldest daughter’s car. I don’t like to drive Kevin, mostly because of the frilly, purple monogram on the back. Not so masculine. This would be my inaugural oil change on Kev. I surveyed the little white car, noticing just how narrow the gap between it and the ground. Man, it was low. All of the sudden, I remembered ramps! I have ramps and rarely get to use them. Car Day just got better.

I set the ramps at the edge of the concrete, inched Kevin up to them, checked their position, and proceeded to roll right over top of them. Uh-oh. Now the ramps lay wedged between Kevin and the ground with his front wheels dangling in the air. That’s bad.

I’ve heard of superhuman strength caused by adrenaline rushes in life-or-death situations. Maybe that would work here. I spit on my hands and rubbed them together before lifting just because it looks tough when they do it in old movies. Abject humiliation must not qualify as a life-or-death situation because I couldn’t make it budge. I gave up and let it sit there a few hours while I pondered. A neighbor’s garage jack came to the rescue.

My machismo waned mightily. Don’t tell the guys at the auto parts store, but I decided to bag it and go to Quicklube where a young man with a tattoo of Charlie Brown shooting himself in the head changed my oil.

“Nice decal,” he chuckled as he wrote down the license plate number.

“Just change the oil,” I replied gruffly, hoping to salvage a slice of manhood.

He complied and descended to the pit underneath me. “Dude, where’d the yellow come from?” he asked when he discovered scratches left by my ramps.

“Crap,” I mumbled. I hadn’t noticed.

“No, it ain’t crap,” replied Charlie Brown’s killer, wiping at the marks. “That’s like, paint. It ain’t coming off. But how’d it get down here?”

“Just change the oil, Dude…”

Man, I’m sick of cars.

The Bickering Sisters

March 20, 2014.Reading time 4 minutes.

There once were two lovely young girls, sisters in fact, who lived in a spacious abode that seemed, too often, to close in around them. They were two of four daughters, not the golden-brown edge ones, but the soft, fair-haired, middlest sisters, mixed and squeezed together so much that they couldn’t get along. In fact, they bickered constantly.

They bickered near, they bickered far

They argued things trivial, humdrum, and bizarre.

“I’m sick of your manners,” one would often yell.

“I don’t like your meddling or dubious smell”

The other undaunted, her resentments would list

And sometimes erupt in a tirade of fists

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Finally the lady of the manor (the loveliest, fairest maiden in the land) had had quite enough. She threatened, cajoled, and punished the two sisters. In frustration, she assigned them chores in the hopes of building teamwork. The clever mother’s schemes worked…but only for a season. For the enmity between the two sisters had grown as great and thick as their noble father’s ample chest hair.

He, the master of the house, was wise on his own account and took action to solve the embarrassing bickering once and for all. He tied the legs of the two sisters together with red silky ribbon, telling them to write down ten things each admired in the other. Only then would the ribbon be removed and their freedom attained.

He congratulated himself on his shrewdness and saw to the other important tasks of the manor, little knowing that the two cunning sisters conspired against him. Each composed a flowery list detailing their own most praiseworthy virtues, swapped scrolls, and beckoned their father back to their dungeon. So pleased was he that he released the two fair girls immediately with a tender kiss on each brow.

He boasted to his lovely wife in their bedchamber that night and wondered at how she could possibly resist his dashing charm. While choruses singing praise echoed inside his swollen head, the lady heard the familiar bicker, bicker, bicker from the other side of the door. The master and fine lady gave up! Would the two sisters ever be confidants or were they doomed to dwell in the moat of antipathy ever after?

Alas, one fine day, something came into their hands that brought the two together better than any silk ribbon ever could. It was warm, imaginative, and likable to both parties. They loved this thing, pondered it, and discussed it non-stop. Oft in the evenings, side by side they could be found on a blue, fluffy throne doing nothing but soaking up the enjoyment of this thing…together. Yes, together.

An amazing light shone over the humble manor – the light of peace.

What was this wonderful thing of harmony, you ask? What could it possibly be? It was a book, then another, and another. It was literature that bound their squabbling hearts and imaginations together.

The lord of the manor, a brilliant novelist in his own mind, felt it important to pay tribute to one of the tomes that brought reconciliation to his home. To celebrate Divergent’s theatrical debut, I give you Virgil’s take on one of the wonderful works that put hatred asunder.

Not coming to a theater near you….