The Amputeens: Episode 1, Part 2

Living on a main thoroughfare has its advantages:

No one has trouble finding your house.

Commerce is always a short walk or drive away.

Your address is generally a nice large number like 452 or 1681.

But backing out of your driveway into traffic at 8 AM on a Wednesday is most certainly NOT one of those advantages. After what seemed like 20 minutes but was probably less than 2, Roger gunned it in reverse, cut the wheel hard with his palm and accelerated with a slight lurch. No matter how gently he shifted into drive from reverse, the Sentra always lurched. Every time.

Easing down Pleasant Street, Roger steadied the wheel with his left elbow and reached across his body with his right hand, instinctively knowing the placement of the driver's side window button. As the window lowered with a sound that could be described as something between a buzz and a rattle, Roger thought about how odd it was that everyone still uses the term "rolling down the window." No car built in the last ten years has had manual windows. People just have a hard time letting go of what they're used to.

With the window down, Roger got a whiff of the nostalgia offered by the warm, late summer air. That smell always reminded him of playing four-square in elementary school. He wondered why that memory always popped into his head. He hated four-square and was always terrible at it. But for those few formative years, Roger played it every day during recess on the pavement court marked by aged, flecked white paint. Did you even call it a court? He didn't know. But every morning the kids would be lined up waiting for one of the lucky four sharing the court to hit the cheap red rubber ball outside the lines or to break a rule recently decreed by the current four-square king. Hey, since there was a king, it probably SHOULD be called a court. Roger made a face at himself for even thinking such a lousy joke.

Roger glanced out the passenger side window as he passed plot after plot of predictable architecture (if it even warranted the lofty term). The uneven lawns were home to an endless array of once brightly colored toys, their cheap plastic now faded after a summer of harsh sun and disuse.

"Man I hate Rhode Island," he thought.

He turned his attention back to the road and realized he was driving 15 MPH. But he wasn't the cause of the slowdown, more the result. This was strange. Pleasant is usually busy at this time, but it's never bumper to bumper. "There must be an accident," Roger surmised.

Now completely stopped, Roger leaned his head out the window to get a look past the traffic. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust down the road, but when they did, they widened in horror.