Tales from J-Bro's Buick

Jason and our Grandma

My brother Jason had this great teal Buick Skylark during the time he was my roommate. This picture, except for the color, captures the car’s essence.

Notice the ridiculous front bumper: it’s not flat. It has this beak projecting from it. If you hit anything with the beak, it would wreck the entire bumper. Luckily, he did no such thing.

Two stories about the Skylark:

It was an automatic with the shifter on the steering column. The end of the shifter had a knob that was short, cylindrical, and criss-crossed with black wire mesh. It was very snazzy. It also resembled, if only to me, those cheesy microphones they have at Burger King for the cashiers to call orders to the kitchen.

Without fail, every time I was a passenger in his car, I would lean over and intone into the shifter knob, “Whopper with Cheese,” then giggle hysterically. Jason thought it was funny about the first hundred times but I found it completely satisfying each and every time. It may have been only a joke for one, but it was a good joke and never failed to amuse me.

The second story is a joke for many, although it took Jason at least a day to fully appreciate the humor.

It was a winter evening and I was in the apartment probably eating some of Jason’s food.

I’ll digress a bit (as is my way). Before Jason, I had a series of bad roommates. Not criminally bad, except for one case but that’s for another story, but the kind of roommates who would never have any money and always eat my food. I didn’t make the money I do now (thus the need for a roommate in the first place) but I would happily share my food when I was making something but if I had a Stouffer’s lasagna in the freezer and if I had mentally prepared to pop it into the microwave when I got home for the night so that I had a semi-decent meal it would irritate me to no end to find it had been consumed by a roommate.

Living with Jason meant that I could be the bad roommate. There was no evil intent, but Jason was family and, darn it, he was a good cook. We had plenty of wonderful ingredients just sitting around. We worked opposite shifts, so we usually did not get in each other’s way (another bonus) but that meant I was alone with wonderful ingredients quite a bit. Having understood the irritation of having one’s wonderful ingredients disappear did not deter me from making them disappear when the tables were turned. Feet of clay, yes, but with a full stomach.

So I was probably flopped in front of the TV eating from a box of croutons Jason had saved for some special occasion when he rushed through the door cursing and ran for the sink. He kept cursing while running his right hand under cold water but managed to say that I probably needed to drive him to the hospital.

“Um, okay,” I said while slipping the now empty box of croutons in the garbage so as to avoid adding insult to Jason’s injury, “what happened?”

Then he told me.

He had parked the car and gotten out. Jason being left handed, the keys were in his left hand as he stood outside the car but with the driver’s door still open. The car had keyless entry so he had hit the “lock door” button on his key fob as he slammed the door shut. As the door was swinging shut he noticed the dome light still on. Not wanting to get a dead battery (you don’t want a dead battery in Alaska in the winter), he reached with his right hand to grab the door before it closed so he could shut off the light.

Buicks have big heavy doors. If they are being slammed shut one would be wise to avoid reaching with fingertips to stop them. Jason found this out the hard way.

The door slammed shut, trapping the middle finger of his right hand in the locked door. The momentary “oh crap” feeling was immediately replaced with blinding pain. Blinding pain caused him to drop the keys in his left hand.

Between screams and curses, Jason took quick stock of his situation. His car door was locked ON his middle finger. His keys were now on the ground out of his reach. Oh, and the dome light was off. What he mistook for leaving the light on in the first place was really just the natural state of the door having been open before it had slammed fully shut.

I would mention that Jason is blonde if it weren’t for the similarly, er, regrettable things I myself have done, me being the swarthiest of the Brothers Anderson who cannot use the hair color excuse.

Jason had no alternative but to pry his finger out of the locked car door, after which it began to blow up like one of those balloons you can twist into animal shapes. Jason’s finger would have made an excellent poodle tail at this point in the story.

The rest of the story was fairly predictable. We went to the emergency room where they told him they needed to drill a hole in his fingernail to relieve some pressure. Jason suggested, between muttered curses, that they were fully authorized to cut the whole darn finger off if it relieved his pain. They drilled (or maybe burned a hole if memory serves), clear fluid spurted out an impressive distance, and the pressure was relieved. Drugs took care of the rest of the pain.

For the next week Jason had to wear his finger bandaged to the point where it looked a little like a light bulb. Don’t think flashlight bulb; think 50-100-150 three way GE Softlight. The whole bulb contraption was covered in a stretchy mesh covering which can also be found on those expensive Japanese pears in your local supermarket.

Having your middle finger replaced by a light bulb is a great conversation starter but since most of Jason’s job at the time consisted of 10-key typing, it was also inconvenient to the extreme.

Oh the Buick. It was a fine, fine car. He later traded it in for a brand spanking new Pontiac Grand Am, sleek and stylish but with more mechanical problems than your average space shuttle.

You never know what you have until you’ve traded it in for something “better.” A lesson we can all learn.

That and forget the doggone dome light.