Stay Away from My Car, Dammit!

October 19, 2005

I tend to overthink things, just a bit. As a rabid, tongue-wagging smartass, that’s really never a good idea.

For instance, the other day, something occurred to me. Assuming you don’t have kids — or have a separate car that you use for work — how often do you see the passenger side of your car?

Me, I see mine once a month, maybe twice. It’s facing away in the driveway, it faces the back of the garage at work… unless I make an effort to walk around to look at the other side, anything could be going on over there. Rust. Spider webs. An interstellar wormhole. The charred remnants of Chevy Chase’s career could be smeared on my passenger doors right now, and I wouldn’t even know it.

So that got me thinking. Other people have to be in the same situation, right? All those cars in my work garage, for instance, with passenger sides facing mostly away from the door. Those folks don’t see the other sides of their cars either, I bet. So, the obvious came to mind:

‘I should really find a big magic marker and write naughty things on their cars.‘

Because that would be fantabulous. Imagine that snarky secretary down the hall driving down the highway, bopping to Cher or Celine Dion or Spice Bitches or whatever sugary pap she listens to. All the while, anyone to her right could look over and see:

I DIDDLE DACHSHUNDS FOR SPARE CHANGE

Or how about the boss, who’s always coming down on you, and calling you ‘lazy’, and threatening to fire you if you “don’t stop clacking away on that damned web site of yours”. Hypothetically, of course. Now, wouldn’t you think just a bit better of him if his Lexus was scooting home with the side festooned with:

MY NUTSACK SMELLS LIKE SWEDISH FISH

I know I would.

I even started thinking about decorating cars of people I don’t even know. Just because it’s fun. That guy who runs the garage and parks right up front?

YOUR WISH IS MY TUTU STRIPTEASE

The pregnant lady that apparently works in the next building over?

ASK ME ABOUT MY DELICIOUS UNBORN FETUS

The asshole who always double-parks along the wall, in just the space I really want?

SPHINCTER FOR RENT — BEEFY LATVIAN TEAMSTERS APPLY WITHIN

Oh, the joy. The entirely theoretical, purely virtual, completely unacted-on joy.

But that’s when the other thought occurred to me. I’ve never been the sweatiest gigolo in the hot tub, so to speak. So I’m probably not the first person to dream up this idea. And we’ve established that I’m both a smartass and that I never see the other side of my car.

Uh oh.

So now I spend my time worrying about what people are probably writing on my car. So I check it constantly. Before I go to work, I look. In the garage, I look. Stopped at a light, I get out, run around the car, and look. I can’t stop. I’m obsessed. I haven’t slept in three days, and I’m starting to go a little wacky. Er. Wackier. You know what I mean, dammit.

I think I’ll put an end to this, once and for all. I’m gonna go out right now — yes, at midnight, in my Aquaman Underoos with the footies; you know the ones — with a paint brush and a can of Sherman Williams and paint on my passenger side door:

YOU’LL NEVER WRITE ON ME, DOUCHEPOODLES! HA HA HA HA HA!

Meh. I should just stop thinking things altogether.