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Unless you're a total couch spud or have a
serious exercise addiction, sooner or later you are
going to decide that you can get your weekend
jollies more efficiently by driving somewhere in an
automobile. Trouble is, everybody else is using the
same strategy. This can be a hassle, especially
with all the recent restrictions on methods of
reducing crowding and general overpopulation (the
AK-47 assault rifle as an excellent example). So
you could sit in the gridlock, cursing and stewing.
You could do what an increasing number of
right-thinking young Americans do--drive like a
methedrine-crazed maniac. Or you could center
yourself, relax, and consider the ancient wisdom
that holds the journey as important as the
destination. Especially if you know a few little
games designed especially by The Weekend Warrior to
alleviate those tiresome moments spent stalled in a
bumper crop of bumpers.
"Urchin Gooning" is a swell game; educational,
action-packed, and involving a lot of audience
participation. Play is simplicity itself. When
logjammed at stoplights, search out cars full of
kids and start making faces at the little trolls.
This is fairly jolly in itself. I usually start off
with elementary ploys like oscillating my tongue
and Grouchoing my eyebrows, then move on to
intermediate, hand-assisted gestures, such as
pulling my eyes and mouth into grotesque and
loathsome shapes. By now the kids are raptly
attentive, seldom exposed to such behavior from the
nominally adult. When the little gargoyles start
responding with faces and gestures of their own, I
move into advanced moves like picking my nose and
flipping imaginary boogers in their direction. The
intervention of windows, you see, preventing the
launching of real boogers. This generally activates
a primal trigger that pushes them past some
obscurely defined juvenile limit and they start
responding noticeably enough to attract their
parents' attention. The parents respond by
battering them senseless, right in front of my
gleeful eyes.
But the best is yet to come, because the little
ankle-biters, not yet realizing the full enormity
of their seemingly innocent playmate's scheme,
invariably try to weasel out by claiming that I
started it. If you can imagine anyone lodging such
allegations against a respected journalist and
pillow of the community. Certainly their parents
can't, especially when I fix the lot of them with a
steely stare that clearly implies, "Who has
abdicated control of those nasty little
ragamuffins?" That usually settles their hash until
late in the (dinnerless) evening. I especially
relish the imploring, spaniel-eyed gazes they throw
me as they are driven off into the sunset, unable
to accept the fact that an elder of their own
species would set them up so coldbloodedly under
the guise of friendly fun. As I mentioned, the game
is quite educational.
I have also found it worthwhile to keep a few
props around, especially a pair of white plastic
vampire teeth. This can produce spectacular results
with very young kids in very close cars. The hat
trick of this sport is to cause a tyke to wet his
pants and therefore the upholstery. Double points
for evidence of seatcover wetting. I buy the teeth
cheap right after Halloween, of course, the same
way I stock up on those little candy hearts with
nitwit sayings on them after Valentines day. Which
you do, too, right? Come on, admit it. Just like
you also wait until right after Easter to close out
on a few of those ghastly candy chicks and bunnies,
mostly for the atavistic joy of biting their
adorable little heads off. Wow, real mature, man.
Ozzy Osborne on a glucose jag, hey. You go for
cheap thrills, you get what you pay for.
Another little goody picked up most easily at
Halloween time (a fantastic holiday for jacking
little kids around, by the by, but more on that in
it's own season) is a rubber face mask. Preferably
the almost realistic humanoid kind that gives you
that queasy look of borrowed flesh, sort of like
Roy Rogers right after a facelift. Some sort of
hat, even cheap sunglasses, aid the disguise, which
could do double duty for bank robberies, but is all
you need to play "Defensive Pass Interference".
This is a high-speed, fast lane game. Rather, a
next-to-the-fast-lane game. Start by putting the
mask on the back of your head. Add hat, glasses,
costume jewelry, a touch of make-up and spritz of
cologne, whatever you think best...and I'd be the
last to condemn your taste in such matters, believe
me. You are now equipped, so just toad along,
waiting for some hot shot, preferably in a Porsche
or Samurai or some other intrinsically
hypercompetitive car to get behind you. Slow him
down, mousetrap him, get him impatient. Then, when
he gets a chance to pass, reach around to your left
ear with your spread right hand, stick your head
out the window right in front of him and waggle
your fingers. I wouldn't be above a little friendly
weaving and yawwing at this point, myself. You have
to put yourself in the passers place to appreciate
this one (not generally a good thing to do in these
little pastimes, unless you are a pretty hard core
rotten egg). He merely sees the head of a
blithering idiot pop out the window of the car he's
passing, evidently looking back and therefore more
oblivious than most folks to the prevailing road
conditions. This can be disconcerting. You can, in
fact, disconcert some impatient hotshot's ass right
off the road. If that is indeed what happens, you
score double.
One other little seasonal purchase can add some
fun to waits in the gridlock. Every Fourth of July,
squirrel away a little stash of fireworks. Some of
these, like Roman candles and bottle rockets, need
no explanation when it comes to creating havoc,
mayhem, and frivolity on the freeway. But also try
to have a handful of cherry bombs and Saturn
Missile Batteries in the glovebox for staving off
boredom. The name of the game is "Sun Roof
Bombing". You can romanticize it as much as you
want...be a Beirut Druze terrorist, an IRA
nationalist, or an Iraqi chortling, "This SCUD's
for you." All it takes is an M-80, a lighter, and
proximity to a car with a sun roof. First of all,
note the driver of the sun-roofed vehicle--the smug
complacency with which he faces life (Or she, I
hasten to add; there is nothing sexist about
arriviste smugness. But then Sun Roof Bombing is
also strictly equal opportunity calamity). Sunroofs
tend to go with certain vehicles, and certain
lifestyles. Surely you will be dealing here with a
full-bore Yuppie; a tanning booth customer, a
drinker, perhaps, of Diet Perrier, the kind of
person who works it into conversations that they
actually read "Satanic Verses"--in short, a
schmuck. Hopefully even an attorney. Sitting there
on his sheepskin seatcovers, listening to a Windham
Hill CD, thinking about convertible debentures,
when a sputtering little bundle of bang arcs in
through the factory sun roof and propounds an
opposing point of view. This is what aficionados
term the Moment of Truth.
Even more ruthless truth comes out of the
multiple maw of the Saturn Missile Battery. A small
paper box with 25 pencil-sized plastic rockets
ready to launch sequentially, this is the MIRV, the
Star Wars, of Sun Roof Bombing. The Smart Bomb for
Dumb Detonation Tricks. The effect upon the
recipient is hellish in the extreme, probably even
somewhat deleterious. Especially if he (or she,
let's not forget) has the gears engaged and is
holding in the clutch. But tell me, what did your
Driver's Education teacher specifically say about
that practice? It's certainly a lesson worth
mulling over while sitting in a once-luxurious
automobile surrounded by two dozen rockets behaving
like killer bees in a feeding frenzy. And, podnuh,
the smell of gunsmoke. You drive off chuckling,
secure in the probability that your playmate
momentarily has a priority of thoughts that puts a
very low emphasis on memorizing license plate
numbers. You, on the other hand, drive on refreshed
and ready to try out more of the Weekend Warrior's
gridlock grins.
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THE WEEKEND WARRIOR
SAMPLE TEXTS
by Linton Robinson
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