Lookin'

In high school, my friends and I had a seemingly endless stream of "bits" — inside jokes we'd just lapse into. My friends were mostly boys, mostly artistic, mostly dorky. We had an excellent time.

In one (and I'm not sure how well this will translate to the written word), we'd stand around a car and be a mechanic character we'd developed. This guy always started slowly with "I'm lookin' atcha cah" (we were in Massachusetts, after all) "and it looks like yer gunna need a new..."

And then we'd just rattle off a lengthy list of car parts to replace. As one person ran out, someone else would jump in.

"I'm lookin' atcha cah, and it looks like yer gunna need a new ball joint timing belt brake pad windshield wiper rear door transmission spark plug tail light battery roof rack hubcap..."

At some point recently, my father pointed out to me that I might be living in "I'm lookin' atcha cah."

That is perhaps a too-long way to update you on my basically uneventful weekend, during which my starter died.