I managed to bump my head on the ceiling of my car fairly hard this morning. When I pulled out of my house, I noticed I was desperately out of gas. I was not even sure if I would make it to the 7-11, so I decided to swing by the Crack-Head gas station, which is just a bit closer. This is a shabby gas stations that always has a few bums or crack heads sitting about its premises forlornly. I usually avoid this place because if you stand out there for more then thirty seconds, someone will eventually hobble up to you and ask you for money or cigarettes.
So I pulled up and noticed that every single pump had an OUT OF GAS sign hanging on the handle. Annoyed, I turned to back out and somehow managed to hit a rather high curb. I heard a horrible noise and at the same time I was propelled up and my head hit the ceiling hard enough to hurt. It pissed me off and I drive to work grumpily. Luckily I drive a Saturn and since most of the car is plastic any damage it suffered probably popped back out like a Rubbermaid trash can.
Last night I took my mother out for a belated mothers day dinner. I wanted to try a new place that opened in downtown Sanford, some steak palce. While I was waiting for my mom I had a beer at the pub. The bartender informed me in low tones that the reviews she heard about that place was the food was good, however the service was 'iffy'.
Turns out she was right. The food was excellent, my steak was so big and delicious and juicey and had been rubbed and smoked and whatever they do to it that it did not require any kind of steak sauce. The onion rings were made with some sort of tasty batter that was divine.. However, our server was a bit of a drag. He reminded me of a homosexual heroine addict. He managed to take our order and serve us with a foppishly snooty demeanor that I found annoying. The food, however, made up for it, and I would go back there again.
One of the cats came in last night with a big rusty nail hanging from his collar. Since that whole plan failed I'm off to harbor freight this weekend to get a cat trap. Anyone want an icky shedding limpy cat? Otherwise its getting dumped in some woods somewhere.
2026 Update
Nineteen years ago: Ed headbutts his Saturn, hunts steak, and threatens a cat with the woods.
Ah, 2007. A time when a man could be late for work because he trusted a gas station called Crack-Head to have fuel, and then blamed the resulting head bump on a curb. The Saturn's plastic body was a selling point, not a punchline. Now every car is a rolling computer that screams at you if you drift a millimeter, and 'gas station' is either a charging stall or a convenience store with more vending machines than pumps. The restaurant review came from a bartender's whisper; now the same info is crowdsourced by strangers who photograph their onion rings before tasting them. And the cat? You were going to 'dump it in some woods somewhere,' as if that were a legitimate disposal strategy, not a confession that would get you canceled on Nextdoor within the hour. I do miss when a steak didn't need to be photographed and posted, though. And when 'harbor freight' was a place to buy a cat trap, not a meme about inadequate tools. But mostly I miss when you could say something that ignorant about a waiter and only the waiter had to suffer.
“2007 Ed, did you really think that little cocktail of stereotypes about your waiter was a useful review, or had the steak smoke already addled your brain?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I’ll give you that one—maybe the steak smoke did addle me a bit. I was trying to be funny, I guess, and I just grabbed whatever dumb words were floating around my head after a day of bumping my skull and worrying about a cat with a nail in his collar. Not my finest moment, and you’re right to call it a lazy little cocktail of assumptions. The real review should’ve just been “food great, service weird and slow.” That’s it. I don’t know that guy’s life, and I sure as hell don’t need to be diagnosing him from a booth at a steak place. So yeah, chalk it up to a rough morning and a big juicy steak. Doesn’t excuse it, but that’s the honest answer from a guy who once hit his head in a Saturn.
