“Oh crap.”
I’m not privy to the tone you imparted on those words as you read them just now in your head. And I am not normally one to try to dictate to a reader how to read the words I have written.
But in this particular case, tone matters. A LOT.
Look at the words on the page (or screen) again. They end with a period, not with an exclamation point. So the valence on the words, while still negative, is not anything too highly pitched.
Imagine you reach into the fridge, say, and take out a quart of milk. You take the lid off, pour a splash into some coffee you have fixed for a friend who has stopped by on a pleasant Saturday morning to say hi and shoot the breeze. As you go to put the lid back onto the milk, you drop it and it rolls a few feet away under a kitchen island. The island is a good six inches off the floor and the lid will be very easy to retrieve.
The tone you should use when reading that first line up above is the same tone you might use when you drop the cap: ever-so-slightly put out, but not really even mad.
Now that you know this, let me start again.
“Oh crap.”
It was February 1990 and I was behind the wheel of my tan 1970 Plymouth Valiant, driving west on state Route 84 just outside of Muleshoe, Texas. There was a hornet in the car and I had a strong preference that the hornet be outside the car. Without thinking, I reached with my left hand for the window crank and gave it a turn. As soon as I did, the window fell into the door with a solid clunk I knew all too well.
The Valiant, (named Fuad) was a solid old car with a reliable slant-six engine. He was nothing fancy, but he served me well and I loved him. One of his quirks was the driver’s side window would fall off its track and into the door any time you touched the window crank. I had gotten very good about not touching the crank, but every once in a great while I would forget—usually when my brain was focused on something more pressing—like a hornet by my head.
Whenever the window would fall into the door I would have to pull over, get the specially-folded wire coat hanger I kept on the floor in the back for just such an occasion, and fish the window up out of the door and back onto its track. It didn’t take long. That morning outside of Muleshoe was no exception and I was back on the road in no time, heading for Santa Fe, New Mexico and my friend Amy Schwendimann.
Amy was Stop #2 on my first cross-country road trip, which eventually covered more than 7,000 miles over two months and 21 states. Stop #1 had been my college friend Adam Faschan in Baton Rouge, Louisianna, whom I had not seen for more than two years.
I graduated from college in May of 1987 and shortly after that found myself in the United States Peace Corps in Yemen. This was long before cell phones and the internet and during my two years in Yemen the only way to communicate with my friends was by letter. So by the time of my road trip in February 1990 I had not seen any of my college friends for a long time. Adam was in Baton Rouge to get his Ph.D. in civil engineering at LSU and I think he appreciated to opportunity to show me around New Orleans to hear some music and drink some hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s.
When I left Adam’s small Baton Rouge apartment early in the morning and headed west I had a real feeling of excitement. I was 24, alone, in a car with a working AM/FM radio, and $2000 in my bag. I had never taken a real bona fide American road trip and here I was, doing it! I had hitchhiked all around Yemen, and that came with its own feeling of blissful lost-ness. But I had never experienced the vast freedom that comes with an open road, a full tank of gas, and a vague plan.
Fuad had no tape player, so I was at the mercy of whatever stations my radio could pull out of the sky. That particular morning near Muleshoe I had found a Top Forty station and the B-52s’ song “Roam” was playing. It felt like the universe was talking directly to me. And, maybe because of that, my foot got just a tad heavy on the gas pedal and I was doing 37 in a 30 m.p.h. zone.
I saw the Bailey County Sherriff’s car parked sneakily on the side of the road just as his red lights went on and his siren revved up. He pulled onto the road right behind me and I pulled off of the road as soon as I was able. I had Delaware plates and was probably the first car from Delaware that Sherriff had ever pulled over. As he talked on his radio I fished out my registration and insurance card. He came up to my car and told me to roll down the window.
I told him it was broken and that I would have to open the door. This raised his hackles a bit. He stepped back, put a hand on the butt of his gun, and told me to open the door slowly and step out. I did, and after that the interaction was polite and almost pleasant, though I did get a $40 ticket. I got back in Fuad and prepared to drive away. As I turned the radio back on, I heard a tap on the window and unthinkingly went to roll it down.
THUNK!
The sound made me say again “oh crap.” It made the Sherriff jump a little and grab for his gun.
I stuck my head out the now-empty window and said, “Sorry about that—it’s broken.”
“Startled me,” he said. “I forgot to give you back these.”
He handed me back my license and registration and wished me a safe trip.
I’m not sure if his well-wishes had any impact on my trip, but I did indeed have a safe and amazing trip.
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