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Cain’t ‘chr man fix it?

Sage calls a car dealer to ask if he has any compact cars.

Dealer Yup, sure, we have a nice four door, ‘86 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Runs fine.

Sage Great! I don’t know when we’ll be able to get up there, though, our car keeps overheating. Our mechanic will be back next week and we can ask him what he thinks.

Dealer Your mechanic? Who’s your husband?

Sage [long pause] What?

Dealer You are married, right?

Sage Er…yes.

Dealer What’s his name?

Sage Todd.

Dealer I don’t guess I know him. But surely you can ask him if the car will make it up here. He’ll be able to tell.

Sage My husband knows how to open the hood of the car. I think he can check the oil. That’s it.

Dealer Really?

Sage Really.

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I recently saw a web ad that said nothing more than, “A new purple pill. Click here for details,” with a lovely close-up of said pill. Is America really so desperate for a cure-all that they don’t even care what the pill is for?

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I recently saw “Where the Heart Is”, even though I’m embarassed that I read the book (because it was an Oprah’s Book Club selection) and I swear, it’s a movie about our town. I was driving down the road and two teenage boys saw the car, looked up, and made a gesture at me. Did they flip me off? Did they do something obscene? No. They flashed the PEACE SIGN at me. Truly. I couldn’t make this stuff up.

Then a few days ago I was in the kitchen while Paul was watching the garbage collectors empty our trash from the screen door in the living room. He suddenly started crying as if his heart would break, saying, “NO NO NO!” and I came into the living room only to see his stroller disappearing into the garbage truck. I ran outside, calling, “Wait!” and they politely did, and when I explained that the stroller wasn’t trash at all, they obligingly took it out of the garbage truck, apologized and said they were very glad that I’d caught them in time. In New Jersey they would have stuffed it into the truck, then driven away while laughing maniacally.