Tragedy + Time = Comedy

My Brother in law wanted a writing challenge...so I sent him this comic strip. And I decided to take up the challenge myself.

Tragedy + Time = Comedy

It was a dark and stormy night...well actually it was a cold, but sunny day in February 1991. I was driving my regular groupies home from school in the old Tan 1980 Buick Land Yacht. Technically it could fit 6...but we regulary put 10 in there. It was a monster...but handy. I was in a hurry because there was only 3 hours to prepare for the big Girl's Choice Do Everything But Actually Dance Dance. Just as I was preparing to turn left on to my street the school bus that was stopped flipped on its lights. So I stopped...but the person behind me didn't. We pulled off to the side of the street. The dirt on my bumper was tragically scratched. The whole front end of the girl's car behind me was crumpled. GO LAND YACHT! It was decided that I would go find a phone to call the police. I quickly took my friends home then called the police from my house then went back to the scene of the accident. Though I was terrified, the policeman was really quite nice. He quickly determined that it was the fault of the girl behind me and let me go on my way. Then came the dilemma. You see one of the 'lovable' quirks of my barrelling hunk of steel was that the horn boomed out reverberating for anyone in a 3 block radius to hear any time and EVERY time I turned left. The policeman said I could go...but I had to turn left to get back into traffic. I tried to ease in but no luck my fog horn roared...I took took off in a flash without a look back.

I lost an hour of preparation so I hurried to get everything ready for the dance. For obvious reasons I didn't want to drive the Buick It's a little hard to go anywhere without turning LEFT at some point. I arranged with my brother to trade cars for the evening. As I met up with him I learned he had just got a flat tire and the only spare he had was a donut.

Donut--Foghorn Donut--Foghorn. I chose the donut.

The guy I had asked to the dance was a boyfriend. We had been a 'couple' for 2 or 3 months, but in the last day or two he had a change of feelings. I guess he thought it was too late to call it off, so we went. When I went to pick him up he wasn't ready...Maybe his Mom was in the back giving him a lecture on how he couldn't back out at the last moment...I'm not sure...but what's up with a guy not being ready for a date??? We started off to our dinner...Slowly...we had to travel about 25 minutes north...but on our donut it took about 50. Conversation was forced, traffic was bad and a sour date was starting to go south. We reached our destination in time for dinner to be done. So we had to eat leftovers in a corner.

High School Dances...why do they call them that anyway? They should be High School Social Torture Chambers (accompanied by music). The dreaded pictures took up most of the time as we stood in line. The final product was somewhat frightening because the guy could have passed for an axe murder judging by the expression on his face. We danced...tried not to look each other and not hold on too tight. Can you say awkward? Finally it was over...my friends went to another house to play games and have dessert, but my date only wanted to go home.

That would have been fine except, one of my friends parked her car in my driveway. As we only had a driveway wide enough for one car at a time and the ground was covered in 2 feet of snow...her car ended up nearest the garage with my families' two cars behind. I fell asleep on the couch thinking she'd be there in an hour to get it. 2:00 in the morning...still no friend. At that point I was pretty worried about her so I called the friend's house where the festivities were. Who answers the phone at 2:o0 in the middle of night...yep the friend's Dad. He was not amused and the party had broken up at midnight. *Sigh* Where were cell phones when you needed them? The girl dragged herself in in at 2:30.

I pulled both of my cars alternately onto the road and left them running to faciliate a quick change. She pulled her car out...but our driveway is not straight and in the darkness she missed the curve and pulled straight into our snow covered lawn. STUCK. Thinking it would be a quick fix...I left both cars in the middle of the road still running and ran over to push her out. No luck FURTHER STUCK. There was really no answer but to wake my Dad up. Thank you Dad for not being a yeller...or even a question asker in the middle of a dark February night full of stupid teenagers. We pulled out some metal grates and some crushed glass for traction and attempted to push the girl's van out. Unfortunately, we didn't do it fast enough...we saw the police car drive past our house...and saw him turn around this time with lights. BUSTED. The cop got out of his car...hustled over to us with a menacing look then did a double take at me.

Finally he said, "You are having a bad day aren't you?" Yep...it was the same cop that presided over the accident that afternoon. I just rolled my eyes and didn't have to answer.