Tip to tail in ginger ale
Kyla Fletcher, LIFESTYLE COLUMNIST
Along with premature patio drinks and playing street hockey in an inch of dirty slush, one of the huge bonuses of spring is the opportunity to clean the fork out of your car after dirt and garbage have been piling up in the backseat since October.
I’m kidding. It sucks.
My car is about one road trip from needing a new interior and one speed bump away from losing a bumper. The inside is littered with empty water bottles, jelly beans, mismatched shoes, paper bags, Manitoba Hydro rain suits, baseball gloves, and other assorted surprises. I am not proud of this, but I’ve written it off as a character flaw and confidently answer with a half shrug when someone gets in my car and screams “HOW CAN YOU LIVE LIKE THIS?!”
Anyway, around this time of year I usually attempt to empty out at least the back seat in preparation for summer trips to the lake. However, I am slightly hesitant to do so this year because of the massacre that occurred in the spring of 2016.
I was sitting comfortably in the back seat of my two-door car, picking through the debris, when I spotted a two-litre bottle of ginger ale poking out from underneath my passenger seat. The fact that I don’t drink ginger ale should have been an indication of how long it had been there and sparked some sense of caution in me, but it didn’t. So, like a fool, I reached underneath the seat, grabbed the neck of the bottle, and gave it a yank.
Since my car is falling apart, there are many odds and ends hanging out of places. When I pulled the bottle out, one of these said odds and ends punctured it, and chaos ensued. A small puncture wound in a large bottle of soda that has been stuck in the back of a vehicle with deteriorating shocks is essentially the same as a grenade after you pull the pin. Remember when I said I was in the backseat of a two-door car? Yeah, so now I’m stuck in the backseat with an exploding soda and no convenient way out.
Eventually, I gathered my thoughts and threw the bottle out the door, but by that time I was already tip to tail in ginger ale, as was the interior of my car, as was the SUV parked next to me.
Anyway, long story long, I’m not cleaning my car this year. The soda spots on the inside of my passenger side windows are a constant reminder of a risk I am simply not willing to take again.
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Answers to Fletch, Betty Spaghetti, or Hey You.
Long, shaggy blonde hair.
Slightly aggressive at first but usually warms up after she smells you.
Feed her pizza and she’ll be the most loyal friend you’ll ever have.
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