Running on Empty

Humans, like automobiles, are not designed to survive the test of time. Maintenance must be performed, parts sometimes need to be replaced, and when that day of reckoning comes, our chassis are often dragged away and piled up in a field full of broken bodies.
While people are not machines, I contend that there are striking similarities between motorists and the cars they drive. Consider the photo that accompanies this byline. In automotive terms I might be described as a high miles clunker with noticeable body damage, modestly priced to sell, and open to any reasonable offer. My present vehicle, a 2001 Dodge Stratus, is indeed my four wheeled twin.
Presently, my primary means of transportation is having issues with its gas gauge. Regardless of how much fuel I have deposited into the car, my gauge readings appear to be more rumor than reality. One moment the little red meter stick shows full, the next I am trudging down Williamson Road with a one gallon spouted container in tow. Growing weary of these surprise hikes I attempted to have the car repaired, however, the problem kept coming back like a sack of White Castle burgers.
Over the years I have run out of gas a stunning amount of times. A prodigious collection of plastic red gas cans adorn my basement shelves. On one occasion, when a dry tank sent me on an impromptu journey, I was picked up in Jupiter, Florida by a Good Samaritan in a pick-up truck towing a bass boat. With no room in the cab, I placed myself behind the wheel of the vessel and pretended to navigate that boat straight down I-95 to the nearest filling station.
A week later, following a particularly hideous sales day, I noticed my fuel gauge rising and falling like the Dow Jones after an election and began to fear the worst. Thankfully, I spotted a gas station in the distance and prayed that fumes might carry me to the pumps. Sputtering as I entered the station parking lot, I felt the car give out underneath me. It felt like I had four flat tires! Not even I could be that unlucky. No gas and four flat tires?
Lurching through the lot I spied four fellows standing by the pumps, waiving their arms wildly and screaming in my direction. Were these service station attendants guiding me in for a landing? Were these gentlemen alerting me that my tires were flat? No, it turns out that these men were cement contractors who had just finished paving the parking lot and I was steaming through a full day of their work.
Anxious to see why the workers looked so upset, I parked, and placed my left foot out of the car to investigate. It became apparent to me that something was amiss when my foot sunk two feet down into the soggy cement. If my memory of high school Spanish class serves, one of the inflamed laborers made a very uncomplimentary remark about my mother and the other three were near tears.
Fearing reprisal for the destruction of their achievement, I tried to step back into the car and make a hasty get-away. When I lifted my leg to extricate my foot from the hardening goop, my shoe came off and was quickly sucked up in the thick jaws of the setting concrete. Forsaking my footwear for safety, I climbed into my vehicle and plowed through the ruined job, my victims aghast at what they had just witnessed. Ironically, the tire tracks formed a large semi-circle, a smile (if you will) in the decimated construction.
Like my listless, dry tanked alter-ego, I too have been struggling to keep running. Gassed and void of energy, it was suggested that I subject myself to the horrors of a sleep clinic to help discover the reason for my impending collapse. One restless night hooked up to an array of colorful wires gave me my answer. It seems that I stop breathing an average of forty-four times an hour when sleeping, which certainly explains why I stumble through each day like a tranquilized circus bear.
Next week they will strap a breathing device on my head which will make me look like a vacationing snorkeler who has been separated from his tour group. I am really looking forward to that and promise to provide pictures here if possible.
Until then, my twin and I will continue to wobble around Roanoke not knowing how much we have left in our tanks. I’ll be the one with a gas can in one hand and a five hour energy drink in the other.

The End Is Near

For most people, turning fifty-three years of age is NOT the end of the world. Aside from the usually body aches and thoughts of retirement, few of us fret over such a benign number. However, if your date of birth is December 12, 2012 (like mine) the ancient Mayans have predicted a rather serious kink in your birthday celebration.
According to the Mayan calendar the world will end on either December 12, 2012 or December 21, 2012. I am not sure why, but there is some debate regarding which date will spell the end of mankind. Was the Mayan prophet who forecasted our demise dyslexic, inverting vital numbers which will determine our fate? Either way, I wouldn’t make plans for New Year’s if I were you.
The Mayan calendar (which resembles a big old pizza with a face in the middle) stops on the year 2012 leading researchers to believe that this was the ancients’ way of telling us not to buy ripe bananas. Maybe they just ran out of paper? Maybe the guy who was chiseling the calendar in stone got a cramp and was sacrificed to the record keeping gods? I don’t recall these Mayans predicting a rise in gas prices or warning us about Bernie Madoff, so why should we lend any credence to their foretelling now?
Whenever any form of prognostication is being discussed, Nostradamus, the fourteenth century mystic, always seems make an appearance. Being dead for a few hundred years never seems to deter this chap from putting his visionary two-cents in. He too believes that the earth will cease on or near the Mayan’s prescribed date. For those of our readers who don’t get The History Channel in their cable package, Nostradamus’s method of divining the future was to stare into a bowl of water and envision events yet to come. Similarly, I have stared into a bowl of water many times in my life and have failed to portend any visions of the future. I have, however, bargained with a higher authority promising that I would never drink tequila again if, somehow, I was temporarily empowered with the ability to lift my head out of the aforementioned bowl.
Conceivably, Nostradamus could have experienced clouded conditions when foreseeing our impending doom. Suppose, one evening, Mrs. Nostradamus substituted a bowl of clam chowder in place of the prophet’s favorite tureen? A diced potato mistaken for the anti-christ might make quite a difference in the accuracy of his prognosis, I dare say.
Another apocalyptic theory, also pointing to December of 2012, centers around the alignment of planets on the prescribed day. Still another speaks of dangerous solar flares causing significant damage to our little blue planet. There is even a movie entitled “2012″ that depicts incredible disasters and the destruction of landmarks all over the globe, including in New York, which seems to always be obliterated in films of this type. Why do these Hollywood studios always pick on New York? Isn’t bad enough that New Yorkers have to live next to New Jersey?
In preparation for the upcoming annihilation, I have been giving some thought as to how I will spend my fifty-third birthday amidst the devastation. Rising at my usual hour (7 a.m.), I will shower, let the dogs out and turn on Headline News. If Robin Meade does not announce that the world is ending, I might have a bowl of cereal in celebration. I am a big fan of Robin’s. She often makes me late for work, my thoughts hopelessly lost in her loveliness. I once mentioned my unwavering passion for Robin to a friend who thought I had said Robin Reed instead of Robin Meade. While the “Dean of Roanoke Weather Forecasters,” is a fine fellow and a local icon, I have never found myself gazing into his eyes as he analyzes a low pressure system closing in on Covington.
Should Robin fail to deliver any good news, I will let the dogs back inside and relax in my recliner. I always said that I wanted to be buried in my recliner, remote in hand, and on that particular day, I just might get my wish.
Hopefully all of this nonsense will pass with a Y2K whimper, and the world will continue moving forward until another extinct civilization predicts an enormous global cataclysm. Just in case, I will be checking with Dairy Queen on the quick availability of an Armageddon-themed ice cream cake with fifty-three candles. There is no sense in waiting until the last minute.