l’histoire des pneus qui volent
Monday 29 September 2008 | 5 cookies in the jar
Oleoptene: It all feels so out-and-out manipulative. I am much healthier not watching politics.
Unnarrator: Truly, you are right—it’s the sleight of hand to distract us from, I don’t know, things like WAR and the end of the world.
Oleo: But I’m delighted to watch Sarah wring another fifteen minutes out of this.
Un: Grateful as ever for not having a TV since 2003….[wanders into kitchen for dried apricots] Well actually I *do* have a TV, but it doesn’t watch, I mean, it doesn’t work, or I’ve never tried to get it to pick up signals. There’s no antennae or anything. So I tend to forget it’s a telly and think of it as, like you say, a movie-watching contraption.
These apricots cost more than GOD by the way, at Trader Joe’s, because it is the end of the world.
Oleo: All food is costing a lot of money everywhere, it seems, because the end of the world is being sponsored by McDonald’s.
Un: Did I ever tell you about the flying tires? Rattlin’ good yarn for the helpless.
Always meant to blog it.
Oleo: Oh, do please.
Un: So one time this spring, el Brujo y yo were on some kind of cactus jaunt, coming back through Mesa, which is basically Tartarus only one town over.
Oleo: Like Richardson is Plano one town over?
Un: EXACTLY. And we’re driving peaceably along, destroying the planet, you know, when….
In the middle of the street ahead of us, is a flying tire. It’s bouncing. BOUNCING big bounces, like, a hundred feet in the air. WAAAY above the phone poles. And then it hits the ground and it exuberantly bounces.
With the, you know, middle/hubcap bit and everything still attached.
And we just look at it stupidly, exactly the way Amanda Ripley says people do, just staring and smiling politely, Oh look, a flying tire.
Oleo: Ack, that’s the way that psychologist became a paraplegic, what’s his name, heard him twice on Fresh Air.
Un: Somehow not thinking that said tire is about to bounce through our windshield and BAM then we’ll be on Fresh Air.
Fortunately…this does not happen.
Tire bounces smaller and smaller and then rollllllls into Golden Saguaros Retirement Trailer Park or whatever, where stupefied car owners have somehow managed to pull over and wait for it. Their tire.
Oleo: I am so glad you are not on Fresh Air for being a paraplegic.
Un: We exclaim about this for days. “A bouncing tire!” “How many times in your life do you see that?” Etc.
PART TWO.
Ole: I love the pacing of this on chat, because I wait so breathlessly.
Un: So we’re on our way to or from Flagstaff, I can’t remember any more which direction, and we pull off at a…it’s great, right? [evil grin]
Now I can’t type, because I’m cackling quietly, so as not to wake up the Brujo.
It’s such a TOTALLY POINTLESS STORY.
Oleo: And the kids hear me laughing and go “What, Mom? what? What’s funny?”
Un: Just tell them, “Bouncing tires are funny! But if you see one don’t stand there gaping at it doltishly, RUN AND HIDE.”
So it was maybe May when we saw the bouncing tire, and now it’s June. And we’re driving to NM, and we pull over at a gas station because the B. constantly has to pee and I constantly want a Slurpee, which my mom would never let me have as a kid so I always want them when we’re driving in the (unairconditioned) Honda in Arizona.
And I turn and look out the back window….
Oleo: …anticipating….
Un: …I think because I was rooting around in the pretzels and dried fruit for something to wash down with my Slurpee. And there in the two-lane highway behind us is A GIANT BOUNCING….wait for it….
TIRE.
Oleo: And I never have yet seen a bouncing tire.
Un: And now I’ve seen TWO! It bounces so wildly and so high that it actually slams into a gas pump and rips the whole thingy down, I don’t know what you call it….
The side of the gas drive-through shelter, I guess, the whole side of a column comes down and most of the side of a pump.
Oleo: Okay, that’s less funny.
Un: And the first thing out of my mouth is, astonished, “IT’S ANOTHER ONE!”
And the Brujo’s all, whaaaa? Another one what?
Then the tire is rolling serenely down the middle of the blacktop and this guy gets out of his pickup and is looking around.
It’s all in slow-mo, just like they say.
Oleo: Still, it has a sort of Monty Pythonesque aspect.
Un: Dude’s pickup is sitting on one axle, because its tire flew off. But he can’t figure out why his truck stopped moving so he’s kinda looking around and scratching his head.
Which is when the B., who’s finally understood what “IT’S ANOTHER ONE” means, points helpfully and said, Look, your tire! It fell off! It’s getting away! And dude chases his tire while semis and stuff swerve around it….
Oleo: Yeah, it’s all bicycle this weekend.
Un: And everyone at the gas station is all, OMGOMG did you see that tire??!?!
And the B. and I are just world-weary: Yeah, that’s our second one this summer.
So now we’re totally paranoid about flying tires.
Le fin.
Now I put it to you, was that really worth it?
Oleo: Quite blog-worthy.
Un: Good, because I’m SO POSTING THIS CHAT.
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Sometimes in life a tire flies by.
Sometimes two.
Okay, can I point out that “Oleo” saves exactly one syllable over “Oleoptene”? That if you must abbreviate, an O would be more elegant, more svelte—or maybe just make people think that one of us has already made it to the pinnacle of the self-help book empire?
I also hasten to add that if many of my interjections appear utterly superfluous, it’s because it feels like etiquette in a chat to keep pinging, letting the other person know you haven’t gotten up, left the room, let the dog out, chased the dog around the neighborhood, made a pot of coffee, buttered some toast….
(Echoes, in my head, of Bess objecting to showing up in prose home movies in an old housecoat)
Oh, and “Sarah” refers not to the Governess but to a blogger friend who got a lot of media coverage as a liberal working mom on her views of the nomination.
Finally, even though I had read it all before, I was trying to read this post on my iPhone surreptitiously while taking notes on a son’s cello lesson and got in trouble for laughing out loud.
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Jo March: Yes, but even as my fingers lingered over “O,” I feared readers would but think of Pauline Réage!
Wait, Little Women = Beth not Bess….your reference falls upon uneducated ears. Qui c’est?
omfg… i loved that, i am literally cackling over here.
And the first thing out of my mouth is, astonished, “IT’S ANOTHER ONE!”
“And the B. and I are just world-weary: Yeah, that’s our second one this summer.”
hahahaha!
Technically, Richardson is Plano one town DOWN. Plano one town over would be Lewisville or Greenville. Which compass distinctions soon will all be for naught because everything between Corsicana and Denison will simply be a vast gray exurban wilderness of highways, strip malls & condos dubbed “NorCenTex.”
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NorCenTex native daughter: We sprawl corrected.
Tires, flying. I never would have believed it. I hope I don’t encounter one of these.
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Tire-phobic narrator: I think we probably saw the last two for the year, here in Arizony.