My Sister; The Writer

If you think I'm the only person in my family who's a wordsmith, you're wrong, damnit.

My eldest sister, whom I introduced to you a few posts ago (and who is not autistic, Jay) is quite a pronoun princess in her own right. She probably could have been a pretty decent professional writer, but, then again, so could Mitch Albom.

So enamored I am with her own quaint, eccentric skills with the written word, I am content to let her take over for me here at My Masonic Apron. After all, it's a snowed-in Sunday, and nobody's reading blogs on a snowed-in Sunday anyway, right? You're out chopping wood or sipping lattes on your microfiber couches whilst lazily glancing at the New York Times book review section or fornicating through strategically-placed holes in your flannel L.L. Bean adult onesies.

Actually, most of you are probably reading blogs. Losers.

But, you're lucky that you're doing that today, because you get the rare treat of two members of the Apron family for the price of none. On Friday, my sister had to take her BMW in for service, and she was given a Mini Cooper as a loaner car, and she informed me of this via email. I emailed her back and said, "Oooh, a Mini? What's it like?" Six minutes later, I received this reply:

"Wellllllllll-

The outside is white (dirty) and seems to me to be a bit creamy.

Black top.

The inside is black—the rental man said it’s leather seating---hrumph.

Here is a picture of the dash & you can enlarge the photo I think to see the details: http://miniusa.com/sections/gallery/image/1024x768/CH77482_1024.jpg the dash controls stuff lights up the red color of my car that you saw.

Weird to me that the tachometer is above steering wheel and the speedometer is off to the side, smack in the middle of the dash---looks like a Produce Scale!!!!!

Check out the gas gage in the middle of the speedometer. The slots light up.

All the controls are in the middle too, like the window rolldown (which is a silver metal switch like in old sci-fi movies) switch, etc.

They do have a circular computer key which you insert the whole piece and then push the “Start Engine” button like in my & Dad’s cars.

I guess it has antilock brakies because I almost had an accident on the way to work and I had to stand on the brakes and it made that grinding sound……

I kind of feel like I’m driving in something from Hammacher Schlemmer catalog --hahaha

In the photo, there are radio buttons on the steering wheel……in the one I have there are NOT, but there are shift paddles above the cross bar….the rental man said he didn’t know anything about them.

I don’t know if the top comes off or not, because there are switches above the rearview mirror & I don’t know what they are for.

The heat is barbas*—my fingers were frozen, but the seat warmers work and have 3 settings like the ones in my car now.

The radio station display looks like the one in my car, but the controls are all silver and instead of old timey looking, I think the looks & feel is space-age.

Is this a rear wheel drive car? Don’t know.

Xoxoxo,
Sister Apron"

* The word "barbas" is a touch of Apron-speak. It means "shitty."

Raise your hands if you think my sister should quit working for my dad and get a job at "Car & Driver."

The Automotive Vagina

When you're a teenage boy and, consequently, at least mildly socially retarded, at some point in your high school years you invariably fantasize about what it would be like to be a gynecologist.

At least, I did.

Pussy is on the menu, no matter what the time of day. You think about the mounds of slippery slivers you'd get to prod, sniff, investigate and otherwise infiltrate with a variety of ghoulish looking extensions and implements. You think about what it would be like to be a gynecologist in L.A., where you might get to come face-to-bush with the lauded labias of Hollywood's elite and beautiful. Perhaps a chic office on 5th Avenue for all of the rail-thin, chiseled blonde socialites strutting their stuff down the streets of Manhattan in impossible heels and clenched butt-cheeks.

One day, back when I rode around in an ambulance and called myself a "healthcare professional" I was part of a four-man crew assigned to take a 450-pound black woman home. She lived in a typical Philly rowhome with a set of stairs being the greeting once you got through the front door. We placed the woman in a stair-chair and the four of us lifted her up the stairs-- a painstaking job on a hot, August day that took nearly a forty-five minutes. During this time, I was positioned at the bottom of the chair, and I was at a location that afforded me an unobstructed view of her copious, walrus-like vagina for the entire ordeal.

It was at this moment that I recalled my fleeting adolescent fantasy of what gynecology was like-- an endless stream of well-constructed hot chicks, aged 18-26, walking into a room alone with you and taking off their clothes, spreading themselves before you on an exam table like warm butter on toast.

Ah, boys... Amazing that some of us grow up to become almost human.

Today, while I was reading the New York Times, I came across an article that again reminded me of transporting the fat, black lady home from the hospital, and about gynecology. Strangely enough, it was a car review that brought all this back into my mind.

It was a review for the 2010 Buick LaCrosse.

While the article was positively overflowing with praise (which leads me to believe that the author wrote the review whilst relaxing in a new pair of "Depends") it made me deeply appreciate the peaks and valleys that are inherent in any job, in this case, reviewing cars. I tend to think of reviewing cars for a living as the ideal job for a writer and a car nut, both of which are groups I consider myself a member. Who wouldn't want to take brand-new cars, drive them before anybody else gets a chance to do so, thrash them around racetracks and put them through the paces in heavy metropolitan traffic, spin them around autumnal backroads, and then sit at your desk with your dog snoozing beneath you and a cup of coffee at the ready and clack out a few paragraphs for a handsome fee?

Doesn't that sound like the life to you?

And then I finally understood today, reading the review of what may very well be G.M.'s final, sacrificial offering to the angry Gods of Automobilia, the M.P.G. Wizards of the Underworld, that, for every Audi R-8 and Bentley Convertible and even every Honda Fit and Mazdaspeed 3 or Mini Clubman-- you've got to stick your face right inside the putrid, flabby and, yes, elderly snatch of a Buick.

But that, friends, is just one aspect of occupational life. It's also a solid, timely reminder that no matter how shitty your job is, there's always a fresh, pink, delightfully prim & trimmed vagina lurking somewhere around the corner, if you look for it.