the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth please...

i flip through the Georgia Straight and happen across the horoscopes. yawn… i mean how could anyone besides your mother know what's going to happen to you the following week. 

i read on just for a laugh. love life blah, blah, blah, Venus is in the blah, blah house, then it ends with "be careful around heat, fire, and machines. they could cause accidents or injuries…" geepers, that's so far from anything i'd ever be doing, what a gyp, so i close the paper and go about my day.

later that day i drive my vehicle to the AirCare centre to have its annual check up. 

i hand over the keys and move into the cement room while they begin the usual routine. 

i sit on a lonesome little plastic chair opposite a tiny double glazed window which i can only assume they've installed for the men. it's the construction site phenomena thing. 

i'm enthralled in John Ball's "In the Heat of the Night" and am chomping down hard on a fingernail when i hear the muffled sound of several sets of feet running this way and that. 

i reluctantly pull my eyes up from the pages just in time to see an enormous puff of white smoke rise up and cover the entire window in front of me. 

did i mention that the cement room has two doors, both that open inwards and for some sick reason have handles only on the outside? no, I didn't. and i hadn't noticed either, until now. 

I try to open the door furthest from the vehicle and flee, when a man in coveralls comes in through the door behind me and says "your vehicle didn't pass, you can move it into the parking lot and leave it there for a while until it cools down a bit". 

yes, we blew up your vehicle, too bad, can you please get it out of here. 

i stare at him for about a gazillionth of a second before shifting to the fire breathing dragon behind him. "i'm sorry but i'm not going anywhere near that thing" i said. 

he looks back at the flaring nostrils of death with a look on his face like Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, when he knows he has to get back into the water with "all them leeches", and slinks back into the vehicle. 

"insane!" i said, as i closed the door and hid behind the cement wall "he's going to start it up again?!" 

he coaxes the vehicle out into the parking lot, shuts it down, and hands me the keys. 

the next day, after towing, fixing, paying, and pick up, i head back down to the AirCare centre. nothing can stop me now, except maybe… 

i get all the way to the centre, am about to pull into one of the lanes, when a Mercedes idling a few car lengths ahead of me bursts into flames, huge orange flames shooting up from the hood. 

all the staff at the centre come running out with extinguishers in their hands yelling at the rest of us in the lanes to "drive away, drive away", so we all tear out of there like crazy. 

one staff member runs over to us in the middle of all the mayhem and pants out, "come back in an hour".

i go back to my office, grab a cup of coffee and pick up the paper again. i still don't know how much credence i give the article i read earlier, but i have to say, batting two out of three makes me look over my shoulders and down at my boots for machinery in wait.

moot or hooey?

crossing one's fingers is a way of secretly making the sign of the Cross. it was started by early Christians to ask for divine assistance without attracting the attention of pagans.