Residual Christianity and a 1973 Ford Bronco

I haven't written about it much yet, but in 2017 I got divorced.

"'For I hate divorce,' says the Lord, the God of Israel" (Malachi 2:16). Yeah. Me, too. Nobody's like, "You know what's rad? Gettin' divorced."

My (ex)wife and I separated for about six months in 2015, we got back together at the end of that same year, and then we separated for keeps in late 2016. When we separated for keeps, I got to live the dream of every full grown adult by moving back in with my mom.

It only took me a day to move all my stuff over, and the last thing I brought to my mom's was my 1973 Ford Bronco. It has a fuel injected 5-liter engine from a 1987 Mustang, a five-and-a-half inch lift kit, 20 inch rims, 37 inch tires, and a fully articulated James Duff suspension. I have no clue what half of that stuff is, but what I do know is that never in my life have I felt more comfortable with the size of my penis.



It was late August. The sun had gone down. Perfect conditions for driving the Bronco with the top off. It created one of those weird times in life where you experience something very pleasant and something extremely shitty at the same time. Like having sex after eating Taco Bell.

But when I got to my mom's house, the Bronco wouldn't turn off. Not like the Bronco just kept sputtering forever after I turned the key. I turned the key and absolutely nothing happened.

And it turns out, I have no plan B for turning off a car. Well, I had a couple shitty plan Bs. For instance, I turned the key back to the on position and then to the off position again, as if the Bronco was distracted and hadn't noticed I tried to turn it off the first time. It also occurred to me that I could just let it idle until it burned through an entire tank of gas, right? Eat a dick, Al Gore.1

I knew those plans were crap, but I had my phone, and Google knows everything, so I Googled what to do when your car won't turn off. Google said I needed to disconnect the plenary cable from the alternator. So it turns out the one thing Google doesn't know is that I don't know what an alternator is. I mean, I think I could pick an alternator out of a lineup, but I for sure don't know what a plenary cable is2, and also maybe I couldn't pick an alternator out of a lineup.

So I've got my head under the hood, and I'm staring at the engine like a Mormon staring at a Keurig, when the engine starts overheating. So now I didn't just need to figure out how to turn the Bronco off, I had to do it before it burst into flames.

Luckily I have a friend, Joe, who knows everything about everything mechanical. He goes to bed early because he's a good person, and it was about 9:30 now, so I knew I was pushing the envelope for his bedtime, but it was an emergency.

I got Joe on the phone and he says, "Disconnect the center cable from the distributor cap." So it turns out the one thing Joe doesn't know about mechanical stuff is that I don't know what a distributor cap is. But he describes it, and I find it, and I start reaching for it when he says, "Wait! You'll want to put on some gloves first because you can get an electrical shock from doing that." By this time, the Bronco is massively overheating. I say something to Joe along the lines of, "Great! Thanks! I've got to run get gloves out of my mom's garage before this thing blows up. If I don't text you in a few minutes, I died."

I run to the garage. I find some too-small lady gloves. I'm pretty much OJ Simpson at this point with a Bronco and gloves that don't fit. I run back to the Bronco, and yank out the center cable from the distributor cap, I don't get electrocuted, and the Bronco turns off.

And then I sat on my mom's porch for the next 30 minutes while a plume of steam came out of the engine compartment, I was pretty sure my sweet ride was ruined, and my penis felt small.

My prized possession was destroyed the same night that I called it quits on my marriage. It created one of those very familiar times in life where you experience something extremely shitty and something else that's also extremely shitty at the exact same time. Like eating Arby's right after eating Taco Bell.

And I also experienced this weird superstitious reflex. I couldn't help feeling that the Bronco went crazy on the same day that I separated from my wife because God was displeased with me and my decisions. I didn't believe in God anymore, but that feeling just rolled in on me.

A similar thing happened to me during my first quarter of college at the University of Washington. I was a super devout evangelical Christian at the time, and there was this one night where I got super horny, like blackout horny. Despite my devotion to the Lord, I had fornicated with a woman when I was sixteen, and in my blackout horniness I decided she was the person I was going to fuck that night.

I didn't have her phone number. I didn't know her address. I didn't know if she was home. I didn't know if she would want to have sex with me. I was pretty sure I knew the apartment complex where she lived, and I was pretty sure I knew the kind of car she owned. So my airtight plan was to go to that apartment complex and drive around until I found her car, and then based on the location of her car in the parking lot, guess which apartment was hers. That's not a good plan. That’s a blackout horny plan.

And honest to God, I decided to act on that plan. So I went out to my 1979 Chevy pickup, hopped in, and turned the key to fire up my fornication wagon. But that's as far as my airtight blackout horny sex plan got because the truck wouldn't start. It was dead. Like faith without works.

I quickly discovered that I had left the lights on. That shouldn't have been a problem because my truck was a stick and I was the master of compression starts. Unfortunately a compression start wasn't going to happen either because I parked facing uphill, and someone had parked right behind me.

Immediately my blackout horniness disappeared, and I realized that I had been full-on cock blocked by my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Through his divine foreknowledge, God knew that my plan was for sure going to work unless he did something, so he inspired me to accidentally leave my lights on, and he prompted a Ford Taurus to park behind me.

He stopped me from sinning by killing my car. Otherwise I was absolutely getting laid. Never mind he hadn't done anything to shut my shit down when I slept with her a couple years ago. The Lord cock blocks in mysterious ways.

So my personal religious experience up to that point was that God speaks most clearly through the internal combustion engine. I have no idea how he communicated to ancient Israelites or present day Amish.

Now back to my Bronco problems in 2016. Even though I no longer believed in God, I couldn't stop reflexively interpreting the coincidence of my Bronco going crazy on that particular night as some kind of message from the Lord.

But then while I watched the live action radiator shit show coming from under my hood, I realized, "Wait a second. I have a comedy gig coming up in about a week that pays really good — more than enough to fix the Bronco. Also, when I got the Bronco I kept my very reliable Honda Civic because I knew the Bronco would take a shit on me with a fair amount of regularity, so I still have a way to get around."

So while I was waiting for the Bronco to un-overheat, it dawned of me that (A) I don’t even believe in God, so this is just a coincidence and (B) even if I’m wrong and God does exist, all he did to convince me to not get divorced was he inconvenienced me for about a half hour.

And as soon as I realized that I immediately turned into Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump during the hurricane going, “Is that all you got you son of a bitch! It’s time for a showdown! You and me! I’m right here! Come and get me!” And I sacrificed a goat to Beelzebub and Googled divorce lawyers.

1I actually have a very guilty enviro-conscience for owning the Bronco, let alone if I idled it through an entire tank of gas. And I don’t want Al Gore to eat a dick because I'm pretty sure he's a vegan.
2There’s no such thing as a plenary cable.

How much bullshit do we create in order to look like we're good people?

I was pulling out of a parking lot, turning left. This guy stops his car in the street to let me out. Nice thing to do, right? He’s being helpful, right? Nope. The dude’s an asshole.

To be fair, I’ve been succumbing to road rage rather frequently recently. I almost got into a fight with a guy in a shopping mall parking lot because he was parking his pickup a little too aggressively for my liking.

So maybe take what I’m going to say with a grain of salt.

But this asshole who was “letting me in” had no one in front of him for several car lengths — way more than enough space for both of us — and there was no one coming behind him. He basically just saw me turning left out of a parking lot and stopped dead in the middle of the road to be nice.

And it seems nice, right? Wrong, because that’s not how things normally work. I thought maybe he was letting me in, but I wasn’t sure because it didn’t make any goddamn sense. In Normal Driving World, he would’ve driven past and I would have pulled out right behind him. Super easy. No problem. Instead this too-kind fucker stops cold mid-street.

So I start wondering if something else is going on. You see, not only do I succumb to road rage all the time, I’m also aware that I’m a shit driver. And since I know I’m a shit driver, I’m not just going to pull out in front of this motherfucker. Maybe there were some baby ducks crossing the street that I didn’t see, and I’ve already ran over way too many baby duckies.1

So asshole helpful guy stops. I get confused. I check for baby duckies. At this point I’m 90 percent convinced he wants me to go, so I hesitantly start to pull out in front of him, but at that exact same instant I guess he gave up on me because he starts to hesitantly pull forward, too. Like synchronized car lurching. So we both stomp on our brakes, and he starts to wave me on to go in front of him.

Nope. Fuck that. I’m done. I do not take his wave. I refuse the wave, and I very deliberately point at him and then point down the road, and I keep doing it until he pulls his head out of his butt and drives down the damn road like he was supposed to in the first place. Take your impotent, pretentious driving courtesy and shove it up your ass.

And please don’t get confused. This isn’t a story about bad driving and road rage. It’s a story about bullshit righteousness.

As humans, we have the need to continually create and maintain a positive self image. We need to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror and say, “Hey, there’s that good person.” We also desperately want others to view us as good people, too. 

So by stopping in the middle of the street to let me turn left, Helpful Asshole hamfistedly forced a story of how nice a person he is. After all, he had the right of way. He didn’t have to stop, but he did anyway because he’s such a caring, thoughtful person. And from his perspective I was too stupid and mean to accept his generous sacrifice.

But if you’re selfishly determined to be helpful when nobody wants or needs your help, you’re just getting in the way. Sometimes the most help you can give is to just simply be normal and unremarkable. My day would have been better if Helpful Asshole just drove like a normal fucking person. I wouldn’t have gotten all pissy, and we both would have gotten where we were going faster than we actually did. 

He made my life less convenient and both our lives more frustrating with his short-sighted attempt at a good deed. And I contend that his motivation was not altruism, but it was an attempt (admittedly, it was probably subconscious) to make himself look good.

But it turns out I’m full of shit.

I know I need to calm the fuck down in general, and especially when I’m driving. I could make the world a better place if I did that. And the world would be a better place if I assumed the best motives in others. Helpful Asshole didn’t start his day by diagraming out a plan to make some stranger’s exit from a parking lot awkward, frustrating and inconvenient. He just reacted to the circumstances that he found himself in. He wanted to be helpful. Sure he failed hard, but — whatever his motives — he was trying to make the world a little better. 

So what really happened? I refused an act of kindness. That makes me a dick. But just like everyone else, I need to maintain my own positive self image, so I’ve gone through all these mental gymnastics to try to show that Helpful Asshole was a hypocrite or a secret narcissist or a shortsighted dumbshit, when what I’m really trying to do is make myself feel better because I was a dick.

God’s not around. He’s not going to make everything right and just and good and fair in the long run. In theory I want to be somebody who helps make the journey at least a little bit better for my fellow meat suit earth travelers, but in reality I was a dick and spent a bunch of energy trying to demonize someone who arguably was really doing something in an effort to make my journey a little bit better. 

So in the end I’m the hypocrite and the secret narcissist. But I can still feel good about myself because I didn’t murder any baby duckies.

1I’ve never run over any baby duckies. I hit a full grown crow once. Learn how to fly away from oncoming traffic, you fucking crow. Good riddance. Right, Darwin?

Lottery Winner

The cabinets were old, but they were his. All three coats of paint were visible if you looked in the valleys and seams of the woodwork. Somewhat random, completely organic, yet somehow intentional. 

Winning the lottery changed his life, but it wasn’t the money. It was his outlook. He continued to pursue, but he stopped chasing. He had a casual intensity, an intense freedom.

The object of his pursuit was irrelevant yet he never neglected to pursue.

His life became more purposeful. Purpose in the moment. No waft of nihilism, neither was there a waft of anxiousness. At every moment his purpose was clear yet fluid. One thing always mattered. It caught his attention, captured his focus.

Every task was life. 

He continued to work. He allowed himself to become immersed in the importance of the pedestrian. A master craftsman of the cosmically unimportant which brought him joy. He had the honor of thick callouses from years of repetition, allowing him to be effortlessly excellent at the minutiae of his everyday.

At the wave of his attention, trouble took its proper place by shrinking. Not completely gone, but reduced to a toy.

His kids knew he loved them. He built that into his reality. He built that into their reality. 

Pain wasn’t crippling. Pain was part of the texture of his Joy. It was the bitterness of coffee and of Scotch.

He lived with time. He lived with spaciousness. 

All because he won the lottery. The check is laminated on his wall. The uncashed catalyst of his subtle yet undeniable greatness.