Another Benefit Is the Truck Didn't Have a Pissing Calvin in the Back Window

The truck was on fire and we were driving past it at a speed so low, the speedometer needle never saw the numbers above zero. We had been driving past the truck for a long time, as long as I could remember. There had never been a time when we weren’t driving past that truck. Whole civilizations began, thrived, and collapsed back into chaos while we drove past the burning truck.

Time goes slowly in a minivan.

Kathryn, a girl who was born with too many words inside her, spent the time imagining reasons for the burning truck. By the time we had drawn even with it, she had voiced dozens, none of them encumbered by breath or punctuation. In each of these scenarios, the fire was always the result of a crying child.

“Maybe the driver was driving and his baby was crying and crying and crying so he looked in his pocket and all he had was a box of matches so he opened it and dumped all the matches out and then he gave the box to the baby so the baby would stop crying but way down in the bottom of the box where he couldn’t see it there was one little bitty match left and the baby found it that’s why the car is on fire. Or maybe..."

It was a pickup truck, but Kathryn called it a car. A lack of experience recognizing pickup trucks is just one of the benefits of living in New Jersey.

Kathryn's little sisters were less than appreciative of any of her explanations, and had spent the last forever asking why, why daddy, why was the car burning? My children clearly do not watch enough TV. On TV cars burn all the time. American children should look at burning cars with no more interest than they would bikini-clad women surrounding a man drinking light beer. And this truck wasn't just on fire, it was totally engulfed in the flames. The metal itself seemed to be burning. Flames swirled in tornadoes and rose out the shattered windows. It would have looked right at home in any number of TV shows. About crying children.

"...his baby was crying and crying and crying and the only thing that would stop it was one song so the driver kept playing the song over and over and over and the CD player got so hot it exploded and that's why the car is on fire. Or maybe..."

The four of us were on our way back from the airport where we had just dropped off my wife to catch a flight to Boston for business. I don't know why my wife goes to these places. She edits dictionaries. Had a new use for the word "wicked" had been discovered?

"Control, we have an report of a South Shore resident saying, 'wicked nippy'."

"Roger that. Is that in our dictionary?"

"No, ma'am. We have wicked cold, wicked freezing, and wicked frigid."

"Send Sharon."

Seven lanes of traffic had been blocked off for the burning truck. At the rate we were going, we wouldn't make it home for dinner. I wasn't too worried. We could have parked right there and dined happily on our minivan's supply of free-range Cheerios. We could have pulled to the side, snacked on Cheerios, and watched the truck burn.

Would have been just like TV.

Comments

[Chickenpig]

Is "wicked nippy" another term for "cold as a witches tit"?

[Jen]

Hilarious! I'll think of this post to try to comfort myself at night when I wake up screaming because of the nightmares your masthead has given me.

[Debbeeanne]

The Mom--
There is a new type of iced tea...it's called Sweet Tea Vodka, and my, oh, my it's good enough to make a hounddog break his chain...

[3-Martini Jennifer]

I'm just happy there are still zombies in your masthead!

[VegasDad]

That was a wicked post!

[unknown]

How about "Wicked pisser"?

[The native Bostonian formerly known as Teri]

Wicked good post. It's really like, you know, a wicked shame The Mom's dictionary doesn't have "wicked good" in it, you know?

I spit my teeth out at "wicked nippy". If you're from Boston, maybe even New England, you know nippy refers to the air, not nipples, so all the "nipples" questions were hilarious.

[James]

I hear you on the Cheerios. I could feed a family of 5 for months with the wayward O's and raisins in my back seat.

[Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing]]

In my car it's old hard-as-a-rock pancakes littering the floor boards. Oh, and about 548 1/2 full sippy cups.

[Lori]

This post was wicked pissa.

[Kori]

I'll be laughing about "wicked nippy" randomly for days. Also, Kathryn is absolutely correct that car fires are usually started by and for crying babies. Smart girl!