TO WHOM IT MIGHT CONCERN (Gambia Oct '08) It is not all fun being invisible, not all about... To all the Young Lovers Dedication: This is for the secret inner couple every...

An automobile, kangaroo, ghost, moose, and an old rocker.

User Rating: / 19
PoorBest 

Written by Olga Grenetz

Friday, 02 March 2007

The car lived at the hospital. It was a red convertible, whose proper place should be in the secured driveway of a mansion or on the Deutsche Autobahn at night, when there’s no traffic. It was the kind of car that was almost too good for Bond, James Bond himself. It could have been in the movies… but instead it had to squander its days on the parking lot in front of the hospital. It wasn’t even a parking lot per se, just a few spaces on the side of the street in front of the hospital in a residential neighborhood. Across the street the cars were parked properly, in the garages underneath the houses, but the red car had to endure the painful parallel parking procedure each morning. The red car was being abused, no doubt about it. First, it was abandoned in front of the hospital for 12 – 14 hours a day; then, it was submitted to the rush hour traffic at least once a day; thirdly, there was a kangaroo hanging on its rear-view mirror. When this last insult was added, the red car almost exploded of shame! If only it weren’t afraid to damage its bumpers any further, it’d definitely do something wildly outrageous. Imagine this – a kangaroo! However, the car didn’t want to hurt its beautiful red polish, so it found a creative solution: it imagined that the kangaroo was really a godlike creature, which could fit the whole world in its pouch. The kangaroo was the fastest, the smartest, the most beautiful and exotic – and, truly, it was an honor to be decorated with such an esteemed icon. When one is abandoned for 12 – 14 hours a day, creative solutions are a true blessing. When the car wasn’t meditating on the powers of the almighty kangaroo, it spent the time devising new ways of protection from the enemies. Enemies it had many. First, there were those other cars that parked in the next spots. When they got too close, the car set off its alarm, screaming and shouting at the impetuous neighbors. Then, there were bikers and buses, who always drove too close to the curb: screaming and shouting was useless against them, they were not to be scared away, so the car did the best it could at standing as close to the curb as possible. There were also the neighborhood kids and acid rain… The car had only one true friend: a ghost of an old rocker. The old rocker lived in the radio during the daily commute, but his ghost stayed with the car even when the radio was off. The rocker sat on the wheel, swung his microphone, gently tapped the simple rhythms on the car’s red hood and whistled something through the air conditioner. When it rained, the rocker stayed on the roof and tried to put the car to sleep: “You’re worrying too much, pal!” he’d say to the car once in a while. “Nothing is going to happen to your leather seats: look at me, I’m doing just fine, and I’m much older than you!” The ghost tried to protect his friend from the neighborhood kids. When they approached, he jumped on them and tried to hold them down, but his transparent body went through their heads like a cloud. They jumped onto the leather seats and pretended to drive away. The car yelled and screamed, but to no use: the kids knew that nothing would happen. One time, it yelled and screamed for so long that the police came and took it away on a big truck. They put it on a parking lot with lots of other misbehaving vehicles and told it to wait to be picked up. This time, even the ghost of the old rocker panicked and ran away. The car stood friendless on that parking lot for at least a month before somebody came for it, and at the end it was claimed by a large moose-like animal. He came out from the forest adjacent to the parking lot, walked over the red bumpers and chewed on the beautiful leather seats. At least he ate the kangaroo off the rear-view mirror. Copyright 2007 Olga Grenetz {moscomment}

Last Updated ( Friday, 09 March 2007 )

 

< Prev		Next >