When I was a child, my parent’s best friends were named Doris and Junior. They were next door neighbors – around here, that meant they lived a mile or so down the road. Doris was one of my favorite people; when she came to visit, that always made me happy. She was my “Aunt” Doris (no relation).
I remember when I was of an age to be told to go outside and play in the dirt, Doris came to visit Mom. While she was inside drinking coffee and visiting, I found some old nails that had been pulled out of some wood somewhere, and I carefully took several of them and propped them up against the tires of Doris’ ancient VW Beetle. I was old enough to realize that I had to do both sides of each tire, so she couldn’t drive out from under them. My theory was that if I did this, she couldn’t leave, and I would be happy, because I loved Doris.
About the time I finished with setting this up, she came out to leave. Of course, she saw what I had done, and she asked me about it. Being an honest kid, I told her I didn’t want her to leave. Doris was cool – she didn’t get mad. She looked it over, then got in her VW and drove off. The flaw in my master plan was that the ground was very soft where she was parked. She knew that the old nails couldn’t penetrate her tires without a solid backstop. So my nefarious plot was foiled.
Not an especially good start for an evil master-mind. What can I say?
-Popgun
Footnote: Doris’ VW Beetle was one of the original batch of imports; it was so old it had a handle for a reserve gas tank down in the firewall in front. The paint was originally blue, very faded at the time I remember.
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