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You Can Shove That ‘Ultimate Driving Machine’ Right Up Your Ass, There, Skippy

In a former life, I must’ve kicked some German dude in the balls. Really hard. Really, really hard. Fall-down, eye-watering, ‘Help me, mommy!‘ hard. That’s all I can figure.

Because I’ve been cursed, and that’s the only explanation that makes sense. I’m absolutely plagued by BMWs, and it must be due to some horrible affront that I’ve perpetrated in the past. It’s too damned consistent to be coincidence. The ghost of German engineering is pissed, and he’s coming after me, every chance he gets. Lousy fucking bastard.

The latest episode in this recurring nightmare came tonight, but it’s been going on for a few years now. Ever since I moved to Boston, in fact.

(As a matter of fact, if you’ve been paying close — no, particularly close… no, unhealthily obsessive — attention, then you’ll remember that I’ve mentioned this nightmare once before. I summed up my feelings in June by writing these lines:

‘The most annoying thing about the winter weather in Boston is the preponderance of cars manufactured where snow is apparently not an issue. Or heard of. Or even believed in. After three winters here, I’m convinced that BMW engineers regard snow as some sort of Christmas-time fable propogated to scare children, or excite them, or depress them, or something. (Anything to distract the little piddlers away from the bratwurst and milk left for ‘Santa’.) Anyway, I’ve yet to see a Boston Beemer do anything even remotely useful in the snow, except serve as a convenient — and utterly effective — barricade against actually driving to work, on those days when one of the bastard BMW owners who park in our lot tries to dig out before I do.‘

Hopefully, you can see how strongly I feel about these vehicular boobjobs. Especially since it was still bothering me in fricking June, with no threat of snow for at least… oh, I don’t know, a month, maybe two? Hey, this is New England. Summer lasts like a week and a half or something.)

Maybe I should start at the beginning, way back on a chilly winter morning in early 2000.

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It was the morning after my first big snowstorm in Boston. We’d just had fourteen, maybe sixteen, inches dumped on us.

(Keep your minds out of the gutter, porn-watchers; focus… focus!)

Now, I should probably explain how the parking lot at our old apartment was set up. Let’s see how this goes — picture three small apartment buildings / converted houses on the ‘down’ side of a street running along a hill. The entrance to the parking lot is to the left of the first building, and dips down the hill at a fairly steep angle — close to forty-five degrees — for the length of the building, maybe thirty feet or so. At the end of the ‘driveway’, the lot takes a ninety-degree turn to the right, and continues along behind the three buildings. There are about twenty spaces in all in the lot, most of them angle spots. The lot is maybe twenty feet wide, so there’s just enough room to swerve between the parked cars when the lot is full.

(Okay, thus concludes the technical part of this post. There won’t be a quiz or anything, but if you can recite that last bit to me verbatim, I’ll grin like a monkey-spanking… um, well, monkey, actually. Seriously, who spanks monkeys better than monkeys? I mean, they’re right there, all the time, with the equipment just… just hanging out there. And the bananas! All those bananas flying around all over the place! They’re experts, man — friggin’ experts!

Um, sorry. I got a little carried away there. Monkeys tend to have that effect on me. I’ll try and keep it down now. Um, so to speak. Look, let’s just get back to the story, shall we? I’ve suddenly got a craving for banana splits.)

So, our parking spot was near the end of the lot. When I walked out that morning in 2000, most of the cars had already gone. (Hey, I get up late. Can you blame me for wanting my beauty rest? I’m not a frickin’ Baldwin, you know.) But there was one car left when I went out to dig my car out — a late-90s model metallic blue BMW. 3-series, I think it was.

So, of course, just as I get ready to rev my way out into the lot and up the driveway, the Beemer’s owner — of German descent himself, coincidentally — came out and hopped into his roadster. And started it up. And backed into the middle of the lot, not thirty feet in front of me. And got his sorry rich ass stuck there, flapping and fishtailing his car around like a wounded marlin.

(Pudge Rodriguez, maybe, or Willis Roberts, or… oh, fer chrissakes, it’s a baseball joke! Marlins? Baseball? Oh, forget it. Who invited you people, anyway?)

Look, the point is, Herr Dickenstein rushed his Hessian heinie out there to get out of the lot before I did, and ended up holding us both up. So then, I had to spend forty-five minutes digging snow out from under his fricking tires, and pushing his stupid front-wheel drive hunk of shit back and forth, until he finally managed to navigate his way the hell out of my way. Douchebag.

But, you know, that’s fine. Nobody’s perfect. We all make mistakes; forgive and forget; live and let live; everybody shakes it more than twice sometimes. Whatever. But Mr. Poopenschnitzel wasn’t finished. Oh, no. A few weeks later, we got more snow. And again, I came out to the car just before the crack of noon. And again, the dickhead raced to his car, and sputtered into the middle of the lot, and got himself hung up. Again!

The next winter, it happened again. I swear to holy Heineken, this mother fucker was watching me from his window, just waiting for me to come out there, so he could get in my damned way. Oh sure, he was polite, and apologetic, and very ‘Aw, shuckenheimen, am I in ze vay again? I know nuzzing!’ Which only made me want to shove his nuts up his tailpipe even more, of course. Eurotard.

So you can imagine my glee when I saw, after two winters of this crap, that he was selling his condo next door, and moving himself and his BMW the hell out of my life forever. Woo hoo! Curse over, right? Um, no. I was destined to be ‘Oktoberfisted’ yet again, the very next year.

It was in the same parking lot, just last winter. Again, more snow than you could shake a mukluk at. Again, I shuffled out in the cold to dig the damned car out.

(A different car, by this point, but no matter — stay with me here. I get just as worked up when some putz blocks in my Nissan as when the yutz gets in the way of the old Buick. More so, in fact. That Buick sucked donkey nipples. And not in a good way.)

But this time, I was rushing to get to a meeting. I cleaned off the car, warmed her up, and got ready to go. Nothing could stand in my way — there wasn’t anyone in the lot the whole time I was out there. I was home free, and I knew it. So, of fricking course, that’s when some lady comes rolling out of the garage on one side of the lot… yes, in her big-ass black BMW, and slides to a halt, right in the very epicenter of my fucking way. Bitch.

Of course, she had her small child in tow in the back seat, and was late for the tot’s doctor’s appointment herself, so I couldn’t even call her a bitch. Oh, but I could thinkit: ‘Bitch!’ Oh, yes. Over and over and over in my head — I made little songs out of it.

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot — ‘Swing loooooow… bitch bitchy-bitch. Comin’ for to bitchy-bitch-bee-yatch!’

Fur Elise — ‘Bitch-bitch-bitch-bitch-bitch-bitch bitch bitch bitch. Bitch-bitch-bitch! Bitch bitch BITCH!’

Green Acres — ‘Bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch — you bitch! Bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch — rich bitch!’

Overreaction? Taking my earlier frustrations out on her? Yeah, you might think so. But let me tell you this —

After I took a half a damned hour getting this woman unstuck and on her way, I got into my car, started it up, and pulled out of my spot. Roll, roll, roll, through the lot, turn the corner to the driveway… and there she was, halfway up, stuck again. Apparently, she tried to eeeaaase her oversized hunk of shit up the icy steep hill, rather than taking advantage of the ‘big mo’ and gunning her way through it. At the risk of sounding redundant, I feel I simply have to say again: ‘Biiiiiiiitch!‘ Ahem.

So, ten more minutes to get her out of that predicament, and she was finally out of my hair. But her little escapade left my car at the bottom of the hill, at a dead stop, with no momentum whatsoever. So I hopped in and gunned it… halfway up the hill, and that’s all she had. If the damned lady had been out of the way, I could have ‘hit the hole’ with some steam, and been out of trouble. So, I tried backing down the hill, and around the corner, to give it another try.

That’s when I lost my wheels’ precarious place in the tire-ruts, and plowed the back corner of the car into a snowbank. Stuck again. (Bitch.) So I revved the engine, and switched from forward to reverse and back again, trying to rock myself back to safety.

Forward — spinning wheels. (Bitch!)

Backward — bump into the piled up snow. (Bitchy-bitch-bitch.)

Forward — move a little, smell of tire rubber. (Bitchy-poo.)

Backwards — some rocking, a slide, and… nothing. (Bibbity. Bobbity. Bitch!)

Anyway, I finally did manage to get back into the tire tracks, backed my ass all the way to my parking spot, threw that baby in ‘Go’, and plowed right through the lot… revved it at the corner… and powered it up the hill. Ten seconds, maybe fifteen. And only an hour and a half later than it should have happened. Yip. Pee. Fucking Beemers.

So that brings us to today.

(I know, I know; you’re running out of gas. It’ll all be over soon, I promise. Just hang in there — you’re doing great so far. I’m so very proud of you!)

Now, you’d think that I’d have no problem any more, right? I’m in a house now — there are no parking lots or garages or any of that to worry about. All I have to do is spend two grueling hours shoveling the walk and steps to the car, and then three more back-breaking, painful hours digging away the five-foot tall wall of snow that the snowplows piled in front of the driveway. Piece of cake, right?

Well, yes and no. (But really, no. No, no, and no. Ooh, but wait… um, no. Just no. But how about…? No.) To be fair, though, I was, rather miraculously, able to get out of the driveway without any Beemer-related shenanigans. I even, eventually, found a place to park that wasn’t completely piled high with snow. Partially, yes, but not completely. And I was still forty minutes late for my meeting this morning. Fine.

So, I came back to my car tonight, got in… and realized just how stuck I was. The car was sitting on three-to-six inches of sleet and snow. At least, it was when I started trying to get out of the spot. Once I’d spun my wheels and dug around in there for a few minutes, I had each wheel on a highly-polished, shiny patch of pure, slick ice. Great. Just what I was looking for at eight-thirty at night — screw getting home, putting on my Underoo jammies, and getting some damned dinner. Nah. That’s for babies. I wanna chop at ice and snow with a window scraper for an hour and a half, trying to get out of the little ditches that I’m digging every time I rev the engine. Yeah, that sounds like a fun night. But oh, it gets better. Oh, yeah.

Now, I’d first like to say — in my defense — that one of the reasons I had so much trouble getting out is that I was parked just a couple of feet behind another car, so I really didn’t have the option of just rocking forward and driving out of my mess. You may be surprised to learn — as I was — that the car in front of me was not a BMW. Which makes sense, I suppose — the car was sitting there all day. It really wasn’t so much at fault, as just an annoying obstacle.

(In golf, they call that an ‘incidental hazard’, or something like that. I dunno, really — I always kick my ball away from anything potentially ‘hazardous’, like ponds or sand traps or angry beavers. Honestly, I’m lucky if I hit the thing more with my clubs than my golf spikes. If I could get any loft that way, I’d just kick the thing off the tee, even. At least it’d go straighter that way. *sigh*)

So, there I was, rocking the car back and forth, and digging under the wheels. I was making progress — I was pretty sure I was getting close to backing my way out, when my old nemesis showed up. This time, it came in the form of a big dark 5 Series car, which came crawling up the little street I was on… and pulled up behind me… and tried to park. Park! With me standing there, obviously stranded and stuck and low on elbow room to get out? What the fuck?

Anyway, the car pulled in behind me, got within about four feet, and stopped. Greeeeat. Some woman with a European accent got out, and — I swear to God — said:

‘Oh. Vere you tryink to get out?‘

Hmmm. Yes. Yes, I was. How’s about you move your Euroheap outta my damned way, so I can get back home before Christmas, lady? Would that be okay with you, or are you here to torture me further?

‘Ahhh. I zink my car may be ztuck, too, now.‘

Well, that answers that, now, doesn’t it? You are the antichrist, sent to poke me with pointy sticks until I give up and lie down in the middle of the icy street to die. Well done. Welcome to the party. Good to see you again.

So, I tried pushing her out — nothing. I offered her my window scraper to dig under her tires — she refused, choosing instead to jab impotently at them with the toes of her shoes. Well, as long as you’re committed to helping the cause, lady. Glad to see you’re willing to go that extra mile.

(Have I said, ‘Bitch!!!‘ yet? Yes? Good.)

Eventually, I concluded that she was going to be about as helpful as a Swiss cheese beret in a shitstorm, and I decided to take drastic measures. Instead of going backwards, toward the Moscow moron and her satanic Beemer, I’d go forwards, and try to iiiiiinch my car past the jalopy in front of me, and then over the two foot tall mound of slush sitting between me and the middle of the road. So I cleared away the mound, as best I could, and went for it.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and lie to you, and tell you that I didn’t bump into the car in front of me. I may have even scraped it a bit. And my car was, at a couple of points, teetering on the bits of mound that I left in place, with the frame resting on the snow, and no wheels on the ground. But eventually, I rumbled and tumbled and scrambled over it, and into the street. Free at last! Glory hallelujah, free at last!

So, I was out, a full hour after finding myself stuck in the first place. And this time, I even made a peace offering to the gods of German engineering. I flipped on the hazard lights, got out, and pushed the Beemer behind me out of its rut, and into a parking spot. It’s the first time since this saga started that I’ve saved a BMW that wasn’t still in my way (though this one had been, only moments before). So I’m hoping that the madness might finally be over. Maybe the Beemer bitches will finally leave me alone.

Still, I’m not optimistic. I still don’t know what the hell I did to piss them off, but it seems the BMWs out there have some pretty powerful friends… and they hold grudges. So the same stupid shit will probably happen next year, too, and the next, and the one after that, too. It’s enough to make me want to move out of Boston, to a place where these fuckers can’t get in my way so easily. That’s just tempting fate, though — if I moved, I’d probably just be pushed into a tornado, or ravine, or tar pit, by a damned Beemer. At least I can handle the snow-related shit. And if it ever gets too bad, I can just wait for the shit to thaw.

So it looks like I might never be rid of this accursed nightmare. I wish I knew how I pissed them off; I’m still leaning toward the ‘past life kick in the nuts’ thing. And after four years of bitchy paybacks at my expense, all I can say is this — if I did break my foot off in somebody’s jewels, I hope it hurt like hell. I want ’em to still be sore, if they’re gonna treat me like shit for this long. If I’m not gonna be happy, I should at least get my nutcracker’s worth. I got your ‘driving excitement’ right here, dude. Bring it on!