Thanks to Portishead, my insurance premiums almost went way up yesterday. I was trying to figure out if my car was making funny noises or if it was the CD, tilting my head to listen, turning the CD player on and off, distracted, in other words, when I sort of noticed the cars in front of me slowing down, and I turned my head to check if I could change lanes and it was a good thing I did because a motorcycle was passing me on the right, but when I looked back the cars had, in the meanwhile, come to a complete stop and it was only thanks to simultaneously slamming on my brakes and swerving to the right that I avoided planting myself in the trunk of the car in front of me. Thanks a lot, Portishead.
Later I decided it was my car after all because no matter what music I had on – Ramones, the classical station or the very distracting Portishead, my car went sproing when I turned right.
Just quit turning right, I know.
I parked and walked around it but there were no external clues.
Still later I seperated the ceramic garden figurines that were on the floor in the back of my car and the sproinging stopped. Sorry, Portishead, I blamed you unfairly.
I once made a mixtape that only had songs that had made me think my car was breaking down (thanks, Notwist). I listened to it all the time when driving to relieve my constant anxiety that my car was breaking down. Can you get PTSD from repeatedly being stranded on the side of I-88 in early ’90s Toyotas?
I keep trying to separate the gnomes… er, “ceramic garden figures”… living in the back of my car. All that rolling around has somehow led to a dramatic increase in their numbers…
gordon, i imagine you can get ptsd from a lot of things – chronically cracked windshields come to mind, and kittens. guanaco – alaskan dope as good as i hear?
Gordon – I’m not sure if one can get PTSD from early 90’s Toyotas (I drive a ’91 Corolla), but you can CERTAINLY get it from mid-’80s Plymouths. I’m thinking in particular of my first car, a 1985 Horizon that often demonstrated the depth of its affection for me by attempting to kill me, a feat accomplished by dying in the middle of one of the larger intersections Oregon City can boast at the height of rush hour. (Hwy. 213 and Beavercreek Rd., for the curious locals.)
I had a ’85 Oldsmobile that did pretty much the same thing. I think ’85 was just an evil year for car manufacturing.
yeah, that’s what I call aufmerksamkeitsdefizit (sorry, inside lawyer joke…)