was just checking the specs on the endline for the...rotary...girder... I'm retarded. ...

Last night, I was driving over to Monica’s, car full of my personal effects to be moved into her place in preparation of, uh, moving into her place and oh the sight I saw. A guy had duct-taped his mini-van’s bumper to the hatch of his car. Hilarious. I smiled to myself and wondered what manner of moron would duct taped his bumper to his hatch. Ha ha ha. A good laugh was had by all (me), but at what cost? I had angered the duct tape gods. And much like a protagonist in an ancient Greek tragedy, I could no more avoid my fate than prevent the sun from rising.

This morning, spring in my step, I threw some empty boxes in the back of my car (more packing to be done) and climbed into Blue. Now theMonica’s car port dealie is usually a pretty tight squeeze. The cars are right on top of each other. This morning, not so much. Long story short, I had Monica’s car to my left and nothing to my right. Starting to back up I thought the same, “Hey, no car on my right, so I can cut it a little harder to get around the building’s corner . . . . [still backing up]. . . . . but there is a pole on my right.” Just as this message reached my foot from my brain – CRUNCH. Remember in Tommy Boy when Tommy backs the car door into the pole? Yah, that’s what I did to my right-side mirror.

A string of profanities about a mile long spewed from my mouth. Then, almost immediately, the bitter, bitter shame set in. This had to be on of the top 10 dumbest things I’ve ever done in my life – ok, maybe top 20, at any rate not one of my finer moments. I didn’t really have the tools to remove the mirror (without cutting the wiring). And I didn’t happen to have any car epoxy shoved down my pants at that moment (you’d be surprised). I had only one choice - precious duct tape.

Ten minutes later, I was ready to go, slightly concerned that the tape wouldn’t hold on the highway. It did. And as I walked into work and a couple of cars tried to run me down and all I could think about was how I had learned I was the most idiotic human being on earth and how it would cost me a few hundred bucks to have figured this out, I had that “Bad day” song running in my head. I had had a bad day and it wasn’t even 7:30. Bad day or not, I was consoled by one small fact, my duct tape job kicked the sh1t out of that mini-van guy’s.