June 13, 2006

• My attack of Pinto-itis

  Last night was another sweet-and-sour night at the Chinese restaurant called Casa St. Thomas.  The sour part wasn't really sour; it was just bittersweet, and it occurred during our phone call with Lorena at about 11:45 p.m.  For the first time in far too long, we were all here for the call, and it featured much laughter seasoned with the salt of a few tears and the saccharine of many beautiful memories and longing love.  All of us were telling Lorena how much we love her and miss her – and we were ordering her to WORK HARD AND GET WELL!!! 

  
  

   

  
  

  I can never talk to Lorena about that without remembering how she (thank God!) ordered me around after Stephanie ran over me in the Pinto.  For those of you who are not familiar with that moment in history, for a moment I will limp down memory lane with you…

  
  

   

  
  

  A few years ago, Stephanie was helping me check my headlights and turn signals on the Pinto before I took it to get it inspected.  [Remember that this is Mr. Reliable Pinto that has driven all over the US and Mexico, has been stolen in Amsterdam, and broken into in Frankfurt, Rome, Paris, and Dublin (Ireland, not Texas.)   To help friends financially by avoiding customs duties, it has carried goods into Spain, Andorra, Portugal, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Yugoslavia, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania.  It has had a really tough life, and is now close to 350,000 miles – and still going.  Of course, my daughters detest it, and they love to lift up my front floor mat to prove to friends that the pavement really is visible through the front floorboard.  It really has been a phenomenal car.  It has taken not one but TWO cruises across the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean from New Orleans to Bremerhaven, Germany, and then, a decade later, back to New Orleans.]  But I digress in praise of my Pinto…

  
  

   

  
  

  Stephanie was helping me check the turn signals, and this caused a problem because the key had to be on for the turn signals to work.  This in itself was no problem, but the alarm was buzzing since the poor car thought that some fool (namely me) had left the keys in the car again so it was gratingly screaming in an effort to get me to remove them…  (Remember that this is a ’78 Pinto so this poor car is all too aware of the ignominy of having wire coat hangers probe all of its orifices as a very experienced (if not skilled) technician (again, me) tried to unlock the door after locking the keys inside.  Repeatedly.) 

  
  

   

  
  

  To add insult to automotive injury, the poor Pinto does not have a headlight alarm to warn a fool driver (again, specifically me) when I have left the lights on, so it has had to suffer the embarrassment innumerable times of being sneered at and pitied by a parking lot full of sexy, sleek, young models watching it be manhandled by a gasping, wheezing, sweating, grunting, straining middle-aged man who would push it desperately up to trundling speed, hurl himself awkwardly into the driver’s seat in order to push the clutch, engage first gear, and then jerk his foot off the clutch in an effort to use the transmission to start the engine.  Of course, the option was to have some sleek, sexy model pull alongside so that jumper cables could be hooked up like automotive defibrillators to get poor, humiliated Mr. Pinto going again…

  
  

   

  
  

  I was in front of Mr. Pinto, Stephanie was in the driver’s seat operating the headlight and turn signal switches, and Mr. Pinto was shrilly screaming like an asthmatic mosquito suffering from emphysema.  (To say it was annoying would be analogous to saying that Jimmy Carter shows a bit of tooth when he smiles…)

  
  

   

  
  

  Stephanie got tired of Mr. Pinto’s incessant screaming, so she tried to remove the key.  However, she did not know that the key to removing the key was the key release button on the opposite side of the steering column from the key.  Since she was not pushing the key release button, the key entry would not release the key so the screaming would not stop.  So she tried turning the key.  This caused the starter to engage.  This is a ’78 Pinto we are talking about and was therefore equipped with no safety devices to keep the transmission from responding immediately if the starter was engaged, and since Mr. Pinto was parked in first gear simply because), Mr. Pinto, with the speed of a rattlesnake and the sound an 80-old-offensive linesman would make as he hit the line when a play was snapped, Mr. Pinto leaped forward and pinned me to the garage wall.  Just as quickly then, realizing that it was biting the hand that fed it (or, rather, crushing the legs that put gas in it), it slunk back a bit, thereby allowing me to crash into a writhing, leg clutching mass on the floor, much as that 80-year-old offensive lineman would do after he had crashed that line when the football was snapped…

  
  

   

  
  

  [Thank God, the car did not start.  Had it started, I would be two feet (and quite a bit of leg) shorter than I am…]

  
  

   

  
  

  I immediately began imitating our tornado sirens, periodically interrupting my hysterical screaming to calmly and rationally instruct Stephanie to go call Mommy – in a very loud and frenzied voice.  Thereupon, Stephanie began screaming harmony to Mr. Pinto’s baritone and my falsetto soprano and raced into the house for help, crying, “I just killed Daddy!”  This brought the whole family out now screaming a full choral arrangement. 

  
  

   

  
  

  Several emergency room trips later, exacerbated by my discovery that I am allergic to hydrocodone, and several weeks in bed and on crutches with each different doctor I saw making the observation that “it would have been much less painful and would have healed faster if you had just broken it instead of crushing the muscles.”  (Thanks a lot, Doc!!!)  The best description I can give for the way it felt was that it felt a million times worse than the worst cramp I ever had – and it went on for about six weeks.

  
  

   

  
  

  The purpose of this story, though, was that I had just about lost complete use of the leg by the time I started rehab.  There was NO WAY that I was going to be able to extend it or put weight on  it or …  You get the picture.  But Lorena wouldn’t hear, “No.”  She would stay with me through each rehab session, cajoling me, coaxing me, comforting me, trying to get my mind off the pain, trying to get me to laugh, constantly cheering me on, sometimes treating me like the child I was being.  But she got me through it.  And now she is the one in need.  We are the ones saying, “Work hard and get well, Lorena.  We love you, and we need you!!!”  And she is.  Thank God.  She is.

  • 8:50 pm
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