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.