Back-of-the-Book Blurb Friday #6

Blog buddy Sioux is hosting Back-of-the-Book Blurb Friday. I have 150 words to entice you to buy my fake book. OH! Let me show you the shiny pocket watch The Pony got for Christmas two years ago. Here. I'll hold it steady so you can get a good look. Whoopsie! I'm just shaky, I guess. Maybe it's the palsy. Val ain't gettin' any younger, you know. Sooo...getting back to my fake book...If I fake-write it, you will fake-buy! Uh huh. You're getting the urge, aren't you. Keep watching that shiny timepiece. You are feeling veeeerrrry buyish...

OUTTRICK...OUTBLUFF...OUTACT

Sal Thethictorian has a mystery on her hands. Rupert Rudy Rich, a contestant on the reality game show, Surviving, has disappeared. No body. No trail. No circle of carrion-eaters flying above the tropical island. Much to the chagrin of his tribe, who would love to sink their teeth into a carrion-eater. Or Rupert Rudy Rich. None of the competitors are talking.

Outside-the-box-thinker Sal arranges a private interrogation of RRR's closest ally, Jersey Joe. For a clandestine Stella D'oro (or 12), JJ reveals that RRR showed him an immunity idol found in a burial ground near camp. It was bigger than previous idols. In fact, RRR could barely stand when he hung it from a vine around his neck.

Was RRR pulled under on a midnight swim? Did a tribemate steal it and bury RRR's remains? What were those bones the tribe was sucking marrow from? (145 words)

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Fake Reviews For Val’s Fake Book

Mother Teresa…”I wouldn’t touch Val Thevictorian with a ten-foot fake pole! I hope she doesn’t make a fake penny off this fake fiction, and dies alone and destitute.”

Jesus H. Christ…”Val T. Victorian! This is the worst fake book I ever fake-read! Changing water into wine was a breeze compared to trying to make this fake book fake readable.”

Dalai Lama…”This fake book made me so angry that I wanted to bash Val Thevictorian’s head in!

Dante…”There is nothing divine about this fake book. In retrospect, I should have created a tenth level of not-heaven, just for this fake author.”

Mohandas ‘The Mahatma’ Gandhi…”This fake book makes me want to wage war against the idiot who fake-published it!”

Carrie Nation…”This fake book was so despicable that it made me lay down my hatchet and belt back a stiff drink.”

We Had Hoped the Apple Would Fall Far From the Tree and Roll Away as Fast as It Could. Strike that FAST Part.

That doesn’t mean Hick and Val wish to get rid of their Genius. It means Thevictorians have a driving record. And that record is something to leave home about.

You might recall that Hick once ran over an old lady while driving the city truck, and sat on the road holding her hand while she was still under the truck, waiting for someone to think to call 9-1-1. Hick also ran a Monte Carlo off the road by a culvert and landed in a little creek. He rear-ended a lady on the highway just before getting out of the city, which caused nuts and bolts to fly around the front seat of his Cutlass like the hornets that swarm around his own head when he mows over their nest every summer. That accident wasn’t really noteworthy, aside from the fact that it showed him his new hire was nickel-and-diming his workplace on nuts-and-bolts.

Hick was questioned but not ticketed for Parking While Hick in the public park. And just last week, he was pulled over in College Town for a non-working tail light. That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it.

Val herself is no stranger to the flashing red light. Her own kindergarten Genius ratted her out to a local cop over an ALLEGED 5 mph over the speed limit infraction: “My mom’s had FIVE speeding tickets!” That might be a bit of an exaggeration.

Let’s see…there was that warning when I was pre-valedictorian. “Well, little lady, do you know how fast you were going?” Yeah. It was 35. In a 30. Why so nit-picky, Bubba, you city policeman?

Then the college speeding ticket down south on I-44, when I was driving a Chevy Chevette, which I KNOW didn’t go over 75, or I would have felt it vibrate like a space shuttle breaking up. The patrolman really didn’t have to be quite so dramatic, standing along the shoulder, jumping into the air and pointing his finger at my moving car like he was declaring me a winner with the checkered flag, then motioning for me to pull off. AND acting like he was doing me favor, writing that ticket for 79 in a 75, rather than 81 in a 75.

My first job was in a town that was a long way from civilization. I made an hour drive into Springfield about once a month. That was almost as much excitement as I could take. So there was no need for the state patrolman to pull me over on my way home one night. No funny business. I had merely been visiting friends, then shopping. How was I to know that I had no taillights? Just because the dash lights didn’t work. I was a safe driver! I had a flashlight to shine on my dash periodically. To see how fast I was going, you know. And I didn’t get over 50. Way below the speed limit. So all I got was a warning to fix my taillights.

Speed was not a factor when I rolled my Chevette three times down the middle of winding blacktop Highway 8. I had my window down, cruising along, enjoying the late summer day, on my way to Springfield. A big bumble bee bounced off my side mirror and flipped into my shirt pocket. BZZZZZ! BZZZZZ! BZZZZZ! Said the bee. Disgruntledly. I reached down with my hand to flip it out, and when I looked up, I was headed for the woods on the other side of the road. I yanked the wheel sharply, sending myself rolling ample-butt-over-teakettle down the middle of the road. ONE! TWO! THREE times I rolled! It seemed like slow motion. I ended up driver’s side down in a ditch on the right-hand shoulder. I unbuckled myself and crawled out, a concussion and dislocated shoulder and forearm contusion and multiple bruises worse off than when I started. But hey! NO TICKET!

And that ticket I got while teaching in Cuba was totally not my fault! I was driving down the outer road to get to St. James for a tasty shrimp buffet when a car started coming up behind me. It came closer. And closer. Was tailgating me, in fact. So I sped up. That was back when I did not want to inconvenience anybody. And wouldn’t you know it? The minute I sped up, the red light started flashing, and I knew that I had been entrapped!

Those country roads are tough driving. You have to pay attention every minute. And let’s hope you don’t get behind a truck pulling a long trailer full of cattle. That could seriously change your hour drive into a two -our drive. So when there’s an opening to pass, you take it. You have to get up speed to get around a long cattle trailer and the truck pulling it, because the road won’t stay straight for long. And it takes a minute or so to slow back down once you cut in after passing. Which is right when a highway patrolman will choose to put on his lights as you whiz past him sitting there on the shoulder, barely off the road, where there is no room, really, for a patrol car to sit. I don’t know how he can’t understand why you were going so fast. Not to speed. Just to get around that slow cattle trailer, to resume the normal speed limit. And how are YOU supposed to know your own speed, what with staying on the two-lane road and making sure you don’t cut off that truck getting back over. Who has time to look at the speedometer? So the only answer, really, to the question, “Do you know how fast you were going?” is the answer I gave him: “Pretty fast.” Can you believe I got a ticket for THAT?

Don’t cops run your license when they pull you over? Because surely they must know how many speeding tickets you have. Like when they pull you over on the way back from Walmart on a Sunday morning, going back to your $17,000 house, and just give you a warning for going over 30 mph.

Or when you are leaving your current school's old building during the early years, and heading down a back street a few blocks away, and the city cop coming at you turns on his lights and motions for you to stop. And right there in the middle of the road tells you that you are going a little fast. To which you reply, “I was only going 25.” And he says, “Speed limit’s 20, ma’am.”

So I suppose that would make my grand total 3 tickets and 5 warnings and 1 roll-over accident.

Yes, poor little Genius never had a chance. Not since the days his 10-year-old self was stick-shifting  his little brother Pony around the grounds, all responsible and such, making him ride in the back seat because he was so little, and making sure he put on his seatbelt.

Toyota Tercel windshield-shoe-polish price...$400.
Silver-tongued Hick's bartering technique...$300
Safe-driving Genius...PRICELESS!

Thevictorian Family's Collective Nine Lives are Dwindling Fast

On Sunday, Genius sent me a text as soon as I pulled into the garage. While I sat awaiting my faithful Pony's unloading of the groceries, I took a peek to see how much money Genius wanted. Oh, wait. Genius didn't want any money!

"So on my way home from campus last night, another Solar Car person was following me home and a deer ran into the side of his car. He fared worse against the deer than I did a tractor trailer."

"My elaborate scenario imagination says you could have been killed by that deer crashing through your windshield!"

"Perhaps. Thankfully it wasn't MY beautiful car. It was his 1994 Toyota Camry."

"Foreign cars cost more to fix."

"He said if he even turns it in he's just going to pocket the money and not fix it. Sounds just like Pa."

"Yeah. They're two Pa's in a pod."

The Truth in Blogging Law requires Val to inform you that Genius did not ask for money, because earlier in the day, she told him she was putting money in his account to cover his mirror and wheel alignment.

Val's Butt Has Been Chewed to Mincemeat, What With Karma Biting Her There So Frequently...OR...The Pot Calling the Kettle Sleepy

So...here's a little something I haven't shared with Genius yet. Maybe I'll put it in his weekly letter next time.

Genius knew not to text ME when he had his high-speed collision. He knew that Val is the excitable type, and would freak out. In fact, he used to tell me that all the time, annoying me severely. "Calm down. Stop freaking out." So I would wave my arms around my head and act all crazy. "I'm freaking out! I'm freaking out!" Which earned me a scathing stare from Genius. Let's face it. His teen years were turbulent. Due in no small part to Val's provocations.

Genius DID call me later the night of his accident. Just to chat, I would assume. A near-death experience might make a person want to talk to Mommy. Of course I told him how thankful I was that he was okay. That we could have lost him.

"What if you were just a little bit ahead of that semi, and veered into his lane, and he RAN OVER YOU!"

"Calm down. At the very worst, he would have pushed me along sideways on the front of his truck for 30 miles." Said the engineering student allegedly well-versed in the ways of physics. "You need to stop with these elaborate scenarios. You're only upsetting yourself."

"You need to get more rest. If you think you're going to fall asleep, pull off the road at an exit and take a 10-minute nap. Don't go to a park, though. You might get arrested like your dad, heh, heh."

"I get plenty of rest. I'm fine."

"You have to be really careful. I've been that tired before. I put the window down. Turn up the radio. Sing really loud. Slap myself in the face."

"Yeah, yeah. I know how to drive."

So...I let it go. He doesn't call often. Especially when he doesn't want money. But apparently my good friends Karma and Even Steven were listening in on the party line. Because Wednesday evening, THE VERY NEXT DAY, when The Pony stayed for a meeting after school and was not sitting behind me to talk to...I grew so tired on the way home that I could hardly keep my eyes open! It was like I was walking through a field of poppies with Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man and the Scarecrow.

It all started at the stoplight by Walmart, when I made a left turn. I was behind a blue subcompact that was behind a gray subcompact that drove r e a l l y  s  l  o  w  l  y . I felt like I was hypnotized. Nothing would snap me out of it. I put the window down. I turned off my seat heater. I turned up the radio. I sang loudly. I slapped myself in the face. By this time, I had gone past the cemetery where my mom is buried, down the new section of road behind the high school in the district where we live, through the roundabout, past the bowling alley, past the prison, onto my county road (still following that blue subcompact), and across the first low water bridge. Dang. I couldn't wait to get home to take a recliner nap.

I was just tooling past the Best Compound (home of fast-driving tailgaters), where the road makes a slight right by their mailbox condominium, when my head snapped up, and I looked through my windshield at this:

Yeah! That's the view out my side window, over my side mirror, from Saturday when I was awake enough to take a picture. No rail, no shoulder, no bumpy-bumps to warn a drifter. Just a thin strip of grass, then some rip-rap the county road department put in because when flooded, that creek kept undercutting the roadway. The creek which, like on this day, is only about 10 inches deep.

Like son, like mother...I suppose.

I really need to get more sleep. Pity I don't have anybody to tell me that.

Send Lawyers, Dad, and Money, to Help With My Sedan

Hick took a vacation day on Wednesday to check on insurance, lawyers, mechanical soundness, and body work. He had planned to switch out my mom's old car with Genius, bring his car back home, and have a guy out the road with a body shop do the work.

"Mom! Dad says he can get the guy to write the estimate for $500 over, and he'll keep the difference! I don't want to be a part of insurance fraud!"

Yeah. That's not happening. Hick said that Genius's car was fine, but that he wanted him to get all the wheels aligned, and get a mirror put on. So they made an appointment at the Ford dealership for Friday so Genius could take it. He has been working extra hours during the week so he can get out early on Fridays.

Also...the dealer told Hick that to fix the damage, it would be $3500. Hick was not having it. He told Genius, "We can clean that car up and fix it way cheaper than that. I'm not going to turn it in on our insurance. We'll do it ourselves." Genius was somewhat skeptical, but was in no position to demand $3500 worth of repairs on the car we bought him that he wrecked while under the coverage of the insurance we pay for. He and Hick went back to his house and got a bucket of water, a couple of rags, and a can of Comet. This is the result of 30 minutes of those ingredients combined with elbow grease from one aging right elbow and one youthful left elbow:

Hick took the number of the paint job, and is looking for a matching front fender on the internet. He says he can get one for a couple hundred dollars, and he and Genius will put it on. Let the record show that Hick took auto body in vocational school when he was a young 'un. He says the rear panel will need putty and paint, but they will deal with that at a more convenient time.

Hick and Genius hired a traffic lawyer to handle the court appearance. Genius will know more after the attorney gets the police report and a court date is set. Right now he has generously offered to pay for either his lawyer or his mirror/wheel alignment bill. But the main thing is

GENIUS IS OKAY!

Genius Hits the Road and the Road Hits Back

No, Genius is not performing "Rock 'N Roll Star" like REO. He's not on tour with a band, though two of his housemates are in a band, and have the front living room set up for jammin'. Nope. Genius literally hit the road. Almost.

I hesitated to share this tale, not because it's a deep dark secret, but because every time I thought about it, I started shaking.

Tuesday night, Hick came home and tromped straight down to my dark basement lair. That's unusual. He most often tromps in the kitchen, says he's going to feed the animals and fiddle about in the BARn, and then tromps out the front door. So I was leery. Something was amiss.

"Genius texted me. HE'S ALL RIGHT. He had a wreck on the way home from work."

Of course the bottom dropped out of my stomach, and my heart fell through, though it landed safely on top of a slice of leftover meatloaf.

Let the record show that Genius is doing his co-op semester, which means he works 40 hours a week at a job that he is schooling to do. His job is in the city, and he drives from his college house, which takes him between 1:40 to 2:00 one-way, depending on traffic. So he's spending at least 3+ hours a day commuting.

"He's with the police now. He hit a semi on I-44. He thinks he fell asleep. He hit the wheels right under the cab, and ended up in the medium--"

"It's MEDIAN. Not medium."

"Anyway...he says he okay, but he's shaken up. He's going to text me back later."

Genius sent pictures:

He was in the fast lane, and when the road curved left, he didn't. He woke up when he hit the semi, and jammed on the brakes, made a little trip into the median, and was able to get his car stopped on the left shoulder. Fortunately, there was no one following closely behind him. As soon as traffic cleared, he pulled over to the right shoulder and waited for the highway patrol. The semi and another one pulled off up ahead. The driver of the truck he hit didn't even know that a pesky compact car slammed into him, but the other semi driver saw it happen, and told him on the radio.

GENIUS WAS VERY LUCKY! Or somewhere in his youth or childhood, he must have done something good.

His car is driveable. The patrolman followed him down the highway for three miles to make sure, then told him he could go ahead and continue driving. The passenger mirror is destroyed. He has body damage to the front and back fenders. And tire marks all down the side.

BUT GENIUS IS UNDAMAGED!

He will have to appear in court or get a lawyer from Franklin County to handle his case. He has a C & I, which I call Careless and Impudent Driving. He could get points off his license, or even do jail time, according to my estranged BFF Google. There will be a fine, and if the truck driver files damages, he (meaning our ever-increasing auto insurance) will have to pay for repairs. But the good news is

GENIUS IS FINE!

Nobody was hurt. He was wearing his seatbelt. He had his insurance card. His car is functioning.

Our attorney (who could have built a wing on his mansion from all the business we've given him over the past 25 years) says that there's probably nothing we can do about the ticket, but that Genius must use a lawyer from the county where the accident occurred, and that a traffic lawyer can tell us if they can get the charges reduced so that there are no points off his license. Nobody knows right now, because we can't get the police report for 10 days.

Tomorrow...a word (yeah, right--a plethora of words) about the repairs.


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UPDATE:

Not to be overly dramatic, but now Hick changed his story after sending me a picture of the "victim" which was the semi truck. Now he says that Genius didn't go all the way in the "medium," only two wheels, which was good. And that Genius hit the wheels BEHIND the cab. Shown here. So now I am retroactively worrying that Genius could have GONE UNDER THE FLATBED TRAILER! Not that I'm overly dramatic or anything...

Beauty is in the Eye of the Board-Holder

At times, The Pony can be a bit headstrong. He takes the bit in his teeth, and runs with it, despite Val trying to rein him in.

A couple weeks ago, I asked him to help me in the classroom. It is science fair season, and my pupils presented projects as they do every year at this time. I keep a stack of old projects on top of the storage cabinets. Display boards that were no longer wanted, which previous pupils gave me permission to use as examples. It gets the new class fired up to see good boards and not-so-good boards, planning on how theirs will be better.

With four classes bringing in boards, I needed to make room around the walls. The old ones had to go back up on top of the cabinets.

"Pony. Get those boards and put them back before we leave today."

"I'll do it now. All of these?"

"Uh huh. You'll need to stack them on the desks by the cabinet, and stand on a chair to put them back." (The stack still on top was pretty tall.) "I can come hand you a few at a time so you don't have to climb up and down."

"No, no. You don't need to get up. I've got this."

The Pony grabbed the used boards in a bundle. He left them as they had been scattered. Some big and cardboard. Some small and foam. Some big and foam. Some small and cardboard. You would think a now-legal-adult child who won the Physics 1st place medal at the W.Y.S.E. sectionals on Friday would understand that this kind of stack is unstable.

"Why don't you sort those out by size?"

"No. I got this."

The Pony carried the whole stack, over a dozen boards, to the cabinet. Rather than set them down on top of the desks and put a chair in place, he tilted that unstable stack up over his head, propped the end of one board on top (almost) of the cabinet stack, and shoved.

Science display boards cascaded down onto The Pony's head like computer-game playing cards when you win Windows Solitaire.

"On second thought, maybe I should use a chair."

"Are you okay? Did that hurt your large brain? That you sometimes don't bother to use?"

"I'm fine. My brain case and my face. My two best features."

You'd think he'd go to greater lengths to protect them.