When borrowing someone’s car you must never ask any questions about weird flashing lights on the dashboard. This step is essential to pushing the car too hard. You cannot ask about any problems that it has on a regular basis because that will only prepare you to keep the car in working condition. It is much easier to put the car in a seriously damaging situation when you know nothing about its quirks and normal problems.
Another key principle is to run the car for about an hour at freeway speeds. This gives the car enough time to surface anything that may be wrong. The only way that could be potentially easier to do so, is to go from stoplight to stoplight for a long period of time.
One of the most important steps to making a friend’s car non-drivable is to ignore all signs of a problem. For example, when you get out and the car is putting out a white, putrid-smelling smoke, you must completely ignore it and think that it is one of those weird regular quirks that you never asked about. If this step is avoided it is possible that you can actually save the car.
The final step to the demise of a borrowed automobile is to put the smoking, funny-sounding vehicle back to freeway speeds. Something that also helps this is to load it full of people and luggage before going back on the highway. Step number three must also be carried into this step, by ignoring the sights and smells of the car breaking down. Continue to hold your foot on the gas, until the car comes to a complete stop and won’t go anymore.
Mission accomplished!
PB – In case you are wondering, I can say from experience that these steps do get the desired effect.
Today, I have felt the full blow of the 2×4 of my own stupidity. I am a victim of the fast-paced American life and trapped by the very things that are made for safety. Locks on doors are useful and helpful. They help keep people from those things that you want kept protected. Locks only become a problem when they keep us from…well…our own stuff. For example, when the car door is locked and the very keys needed to open it are, in fact, inside, shining the glint of mockery off their reflective surface into your longing eyes.
As you may have guessed, this is the situation that I was in today. After eating half of my Crunchwrap Supreme from Taco Bell, I decided to go back in to go to use the facilities. It was only seconds after I shut the door that I realized that I did not have those ever so precious keys. The irony in all of this, is that as I was getting out, I rolled up my window with the thought that it had to be up just enough, so that an arm couldn’t get through to unlock the door. Now, what seemed as a genius idea just seconds ago, now seems like I just pulled out a pistol and intentionally shot myself in the leg.
Well, the solution to the problem came in the form of a wrench that was purchased from Rite Aid. I unscrewed all of the screws that held the window of my canopy on and then proceeded to pry open the window. I had left the back window of the cab open and so in order to get my keys all I had to do was get through the one window in the canopy in the bed of the truck. I can only imagine what it would like to see a guy in the back of a truck struggling with the back window and claiming that it was his vehicle. Thank God that I wasn’t questioned by the families that were parked next to me or the paramedics parked across from me. Once the window was opened, it was just a matter of folding my body in the appropriate position to squeeze through the unreasonably small two windows, grab my keys and repeat the process. Needless to say, I finished my now soggy crunchwrap supreme and drove away hot and satisfied.
PB - I never did use the restroom.
