imagination hurts everyone's face

sometimes my kids come up with something that is initially absofuckinglutely brilliant in its surreality and apparent nonsequitor qualities, and yet shows the connections being made on a larger scale inside their head.

my boys love the hitchiker's guide to the galaxy (the movie, not the book. we are far from past reading anything that doesn't have a large and brightly-colored picture every 5 words), which is wonderful cause i am a fan of both the books and the movie. their mom is consantly saying, "they are your kids" to which i reply, "god, i hope so" followed by exposing them to more star wars or mst3k or something else equally as cool and good for their bodies and souls.

there is a scene in the movie where the main characters go to the planet of the vogons, a race of giant slug-like creatures who are not smart and lack independant thought, and for this reason are masters of the administrative side of the universe, hahaha. yes, the books and movie have an incredible sense of farcical and tongue-in-cheek humor.

anyways, i digress. the characters discover that any thought, idea, or imagination is rewarded with a swift smack to the face by creatures resembling flyswatters. my kids think this scene is one of the best ever in cinematography, and really, i tend to agree in many ways. so we were all laughing uproariously as one would say, "i think we--" followed by fwap! and "ooh, ow!"

then my oldest turns to me, and quotes the line i have used as the title of this post. and i was tickled, and pleased, and amazed. after being beautifully awed, i was quick to point out that it was only on vogsphere that this was the case. (sometimes imagination is the only thing keeping us together, and i am far from gonna make my kids feel like imagination is a bad thing.)

mere minutes later, we were all buckled into the car to mail off the wife's last care package, full of love and concern and ready-made asian food, (31 days, o beloved non-existant readers, a month. one month. one motherfucking month! i dance a little jig and pump my fists in the air, even adding some john travolta finger-points. i think i can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel.) and i turn the key in the ignition and...

nothing. no click, no whirr, absolutely nothing.

the backstory: friday, we were at my mom's. the boys played games. late friday night, upon arriving home after food, drink, and a healthy measure of brooke's boobs, i carried my sleeping bairns into their beds, left everything else in the car, chained the doors (we have chains installed on the inside of every door that leads oustide. this as a result of no. 1 going on walkabout on his own once when he was much younger. the kid really is a regular houdini), and chatted for a time to my wife on the computer whilst drinking, and finally went to sleep.

i slept in, of course. the kids woke up at their usual 5, 5:30, of course. somehow or other, they undid the chain, remembered the games were in the car (i did have enough foresight to put the actual console up in my room before going to bed), and raided the car like huns led by genghis kahn ransacking a village.

when i woke up a little later, both back doors were open on the car. grumbling and rubbing my head, i closed them both and thought i had taken care of the situation.

now back to today. i realize that lights had been turned on and left that way for a few days. who needs fucking reading lights on the damn rearview anyhow? like i am going to tackle fucking war and peace as i barrel down the freeway at 60 or something, and if they feel the need to provide us with tiny lights cleverly hidden in the back of the mirror, then there should be some kind of alarm or flashing light to warn one that you have left these lights on, because they are completely invisible during the daylight hours.

i push my car down the driveway so that it is alongside my friend a's car, which is occupying space there until she returns from her own time in the desert. i lecture the kids soundly on getting into the car unattended, and "messing with shit" and other tidbits of fatherly wisdom. the driveway slopes, and my car rolls a bit further than i wanted, but i get the e-brake on and pop the respective hoods.

the jumper cables won't quite reach.

i set my shoulder in the doorjamb of my car, release the brake, and shove. i grunt. i strain. i curse the car (which is easily the best i have ever owned), the manufacturers, my kids (inaudible to them of course, as they sit trussed in their safety seats and watch daddy kill himself, barely containing their amusement at how fun all this is), and my rotten luck, and all i manage to do is hold the car in place. when i relax my hold a bit to reengage the emergency brake, it rolls down the driveway another few inches.

i am loathe to do much maneouvering in a's car, because mine has already ended up with only about six inches between her driver's side door, and my passenger side door, and i consider myself lucky already that my suv didn't shake me off like a fly and run uncontrolled straight into a's front grill. so i make a few more (miserable) attempts at rolling my car up the slope, including chocking the tire and rocking the entire vehicle back and forth while my thighs and buttocks scream in pain and viens pop in my temples in an attempt to shift the bastard a foot forward.

i succeed only in bathing myself in sweat.

so i run around to a's car, get in the passenger side, climb over to the driver's side, say a small prayer to the patron saint of befuddled stay-home fathers with battery-draining kids and the fear of damaging vehicles not one's own (i think his name is mortimer, st. mortimer), and slooooooooowly back up until the fronts of both vehicles align.

back over the storage bin, grinding my thigh against the steering wheel, and out the door, attach the cables to a's battery (having horrible visions of the cables falling into the fan and being yanked in, seizing the engine, and bursting into flame with the kind of explosions only hollywood and my own face-hurting imagination can concoct), stretching them across only to find that i need just two more inches to reach from one battery to the other. i pull, i tug, i rearrange the way the cables lay across everything, but nothing. suddenly, i feel akin to harold lloyd and buster keaton.

i climb back over the bin, prang my knee against the shifter, turn the steering wheel towards my car, and, holding my breath, inch even closer, pulling ahead some, straightening out, and backing up so close that a's sideview mirror nearly hits mine.

back over, and out, sweating, cursing, a knot made of steel cable forming between my shoulder blades, attach the cables at both ends (thank the lord), and rev up my car.

both of my sprogs throw their arms into the air and shout "it's working! yay, daddy, it's working!" as i leap out and undo the cables, drop two hoods, pull my car forward so i may remove the rock i was using as a chock, and reposition a's car so it isn't occupying more than its fair share of the driveway, and we drive off to mail the wife's package.

again i lecture my children, blank stares greeting me, and silently add locking the car to the checklist of things i must accomplish before going to bed so i am assured to wake up to less of a disaster every morning.

after a long nap on the couch, feel i ought to clean the house (yet fucking again. i spent all day yesterday cleaning, and yet, somehow, my children have returned it to the state it was in yesterday. do they set some alarm? do they wear protective gear? "hey, no. 2, it's time to wake up. dad's completely out. if we're gonna trash the place to the same level it was yesterday, we really gotta get going. here's your orange vest." i picture my kids with hardhats and steel-toed boots, dutifully tossing cereal all over the carpet and carefully dumping out stacks of dvd's and video games, calling back and forth to one another: "don't cut any corners with that peanut butter, you were slacking a bit yesterday" or "where did you leave the wheelbarrow we were using?")

fwap! ooh, ow.

now my face hurts.

darth sardonic