Some Days You're The Windshield, Some Days You're The Bug, And Some Days You're The Driver Trying To Peer Through The Dried Windshield Bug Guts

Woe was me this morning as I headed off to town to pick up prescriptions, mail The Pony a care package, and stop by the lawyer's office to keep the #1 son out of a jam.

That last part was Farmer H's doing. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, like Jack Torrance in The Shining, is of the opinion that the little pup should take his medicine. It's simply a matter of flying like a bat out of not-heaven, 10 mph over the posted bat-cruising limit. But rather than have the perpetrator pay out of his stash as was planned, check already written for restitution, Farmer H butted in and set the squeaky wheels in motion to have grease applied so as not to have an insurance increase and a record. However...that's not what put me in a state of woe.

As I pulled out onto the lettered blacktop highway, crossed the bridge when I came to it, and started up the hill toward prison...a bug splatted on T-Hoe's windshield. It was not a glancing blow. Apparently, some bugs are all brown and green inside, like a chewed-up caramel-coated Granny Smith. With those guts being fresh upon the glass, I twisted the washer-wiper lever to dispose of the corpse remnants. Well! It seems that insect innards are not like a messy morsel of food, where quick cleanup renders the surface spotless once more. No, insect innards form an opaque paste that cannot be touched by washer fluid and a levered strip of squeegee-like rubber.

Of course that mess was right in my eyeline. Exactly in the six-inch by two-inch swath I used to peer at the road in front of me. Where is that undiagnosed case of scoliosis when you need it? I had to lean over and crick my neck in order to see where I was going and where other cars were coming from. What a pain in the patootie! I was in a hurry to get that care package to the dead-mouse-smelling post office before the shipment went out for the day. Which happens pretty early in the morning around these parts.

I made it with five minutes to spare. Then the clerk wanted to give me lip about having no street address in the five-line address. Give me a break! It's the exact address I copied down from the papers telling The Pony where he can receive mail while at Missouri Scholars Academy. Seriously. I think that the city in the bottom line, with University of Missouri right above it, will be good enough to get it there. That's how the #1 son's mail always went to HIS college. City name, then college, then dorm, then kid. The Pony's had the addition of the Scholars Academy in it. So stop bustin' Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's chops, dead-mouse-sniffing lady!

On to the lawyer's office. Looking at the world through caramel-Granny-Smith-tinted window. Enough was enough. I passed the lake. Coasted down the winding road. Came to the stop sign by the bank that cheated my mom out of ten dollars...and pulled straight across to my convenience store that I used only for gassing T-Hoe. It was not time for gas, but I pulled up by the pumps anyway. It was time to commandeer their real-life squeegee, soaking its blade in a vat of window cleaner. VOILA! Clean windshield. I hope the clerk did not report me as a drive-away.

That's not stealing, is it? I get gas there every week. Surely they recognized the statuesque (as in a female, more clothed, statue of Buddha) figure of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom.

At least my tiny, victimless crime cured my self-imposed case of scoliosis.