Visions of a mangled Buick danced in my head.
It wasn’t that much of an extreme over-reactive leap, considering.
The previous week, Jeff had accidentally put the car into reverse instead of drive. At the gas station. He managed to crumple a bit of the hood of the vehicle behind him.
Luckily, “It was a junker and the fella didn’t care.” At least, that’s what Jeff told me. Right before he told me, “I gave him 50 bucks, and he was happy.”
“What about our car?” I wanted to know. “Nothin’’” Jeff smiled. “Not even a scratch.”
I was curious about that. How did he damage the other car without damaging ours, and where did he get the $50 from? “Well, I wasn’t going all that fast,” he chuckled. “Buick’s solid.” The money game from the store till.
Anyway, that’s why the ‘Did Jeff tell you about the car?’ question, riled me.
Split-second, internal conversing commenced. I would have noticed that, right? I couldn’t have walked right by the car and missed that, right?
“Oh, it was so funny,” she laughed.
‘Funny’ caught my attention. I rationalized. If it was funny, it couldn’t be that bad, right?
“I looked out my window and Jeff was sittin’ in the car with the door open, and one leg hanging out.”
“One leg out?” Flashback to the time he decided to hang his blood-spurting leg out of the car on our way to the hospital, conveniently located at the end of our street.
“Yep.” she continued. “I looked out again, and he was still there, and the car was still running!”
Again? How much time had passed between the two look-sees? Then my brain caught up.
“The car was … running?” I gasped.
“Yeah, but don’t worry, hon. He woke up.”
“He. Woke. Up?” My stomach dropped into a downward flip-flop. A heart skip had me clutching the phone and the counter. “He was sleeping? And, the car was running?”
“Yeah, it was just a few minutes.”
‘Don’t worry’ is one of those knee-jerk, antonym inducing commands. I was worried. “Ok.” I said, and thanked her for calling and letting me know.
Jeff wandered back into the kitchen with the last of the shopping.
“So…” I raised my eyebrows, and peered over my glasses. “Wanna tell me about falling asleep… in the driveway…:
Jeff took a deep breath.
“With the car running…
Big-mouth bass impression.
“And one leg hanging out?”
“Oh, geez,” he protested. “I was just waitin’ for the end of the song.”
Quote for the Week: 
knabble 