[UberRoo]

So I had this rental car, five years ago, roughly. It's an Oldsmobile or Buick something or other. It's got all the goodies: ABS, traction control, power everything, heads-up display, and a nifty key fob.

The key fob is the coolest part. It's got like six buttons and they do almost everything depending on what button combination you use.

So I'm going to Wal-Mart. Just as I'm leaving the car, I notice a car pull in beside me. The lady opens her door right into the rental, hard enough that I hear it hit. She gets out of her car as though nothing happened. First of all, it's a freakin' rental, so I don't really care. Secondly, it has big plastic side panels all the way around, so it's all Rubbermaid and bulletproofed. ...but that's not the point.

I can't believe a lightning bolt hasn't smitten this lady already, so I'm watching to see what happens next. She must be about to give birth to a cow, because she's certainly large enough and she's got enough food in her hands to indicate she's eating for quintuplets. The first thing she does is set her Hippo-Meal on the roof of my rental. She waddles around a little bit, nudging her door into mine a few times as she sorts out her food, finally determining that her desire to buy more food at Wal-Mart is more important than the food at hand. So she decides to dump her feast into the back seat, repeating her first performance again with the rear door. The problem is that her drink, which appears to be the next size smaller than a 55-gallon drum, is hampering her ability to balance her food, which is compounded by her inability to bend anywhere but at the jaw.

So she sets her drink on my trunk. I'm still wondering what's taking the lightning bolt so long. Her little show goes on a bit longer, but finally she somehow manages to part ways with her food. She closes her doors, turns around, and grabs her drink off of my trunk. At that precise moment, I press the magic button combination on the key fob, which releases the trunk. The lady backs away a step and looks around to see who is watching. The remote has great range, so she doesn't spot me.

She hesitantly reaches out and closes my trunk. I wait a half-second and pop the trunk again. This time she quickly reaches out and bats it closed. ...but it doesn't even latch because I've already released it again.

Now she's turning red. She starts to close the trunk again - slowly this time - and she's looking around for a place to set her drink. She gets the trunk mostly closed and starts to set the drink on it again, but the trunk slopes now and the drink wants to slide off. (Those rental places use great wax.) Frustrated, she attempts to slam the trunk, which is of course to no avail. She turns around, rotating like a small planet, and sets the drink on her trunk.

Again she turns around, determined this time to close the damn trunk. She positions herself directly behind the car, and with her immense weight, leans on the trunk. It latches! After her diamond-crushing exertion, I wasn't sure the trunk would ever open again, but... One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Missis-*CLICK*! I'm waiting for her to explode at this point. She looks around again, still not noticing the guy with a key fob, standing behind a minivan laughing. She reaches up and slams the trunk so hard it sets off a car alarm two cars away.

I decide the game is over. She's made it clear that she's more than capable of breaking something, and painfully obvious that it's likely to happen. She waits. It's staying shut. I change positions so as not to face the wrath of her gravitational forces should her orbit pass too near. Yup, it appears to be latched. Before it can spring up again, she makes a B-line for Wally's, gets halfway, and remembers that she forgot her drink. She stops to turn around, judges the distance to be too far, and forgoes the journey to rescue it.

I shopped at Wal-Mart for a little while and returned to my car. Her car was gone. Her drink was on the ground, cup crushed, lid blowing around in the breeze, diet sugarwater leaving a sticky puddle under my car. Nice. No door dings that I could detect. The rental company didn't complain.

Somewhere there's a lightning bolt with her name on it.

Some people just don't seem to get it.