Lasting Lessons

Part I:

When I was 19 years old, I bought my first car. It was a sweet, 1979 Honda Civic with a manual choke. Living in Edmonton, the winters led to a rather elaborate process needed to come to a stop until she warmed up (a good 15 minutes), because she'd stall if I didn't keep the gas going through her fuel lines by keeping my foot ever so lightly on the gas - but she'd also stall if I left the manual choke out for too long. So as I was pulling up to the stop light, I'd pull out the manual choke, gear down to neutral, come to a stop, move my left foot from the clutch to the brake, move my right foot onto the gas and push in the manual choke. I'd keep my eye on the lights, and time it so that I did the exact reverse process just at the right time to start driving when it went green.


Now - this is more for background information prior to the actual point (necessary to understand the depth of my idiocy, you see...)


I began dating this girl in January of my winter term that year. In retrospect, she wasn't a very nice person, but hey... she was a swimsuit model. Don't judge - we've all made that mistake before, especially when we're young. Anyway, things were pretty much winding down between us by February, but I was still dating her... we were driving around at about 12:30am on a Tuesday night, trying to find somewhere still open that served vegetarian food (for her, not for me), and I had reached the end of Whyte Avenue. Knowing that there was nothing beyond 104th Street, in frustration I swung a u-turn... and as I finished it, found myself looking square in the eyes of a cop that was in the cruiser directly behind me just prior to turning around. I looked in my rearview and saw them flip on the lights and turn around to follow me... (to be continued)

~Guy