 |
| Available now for Kindle; see add this page. Free PC/Mac Kindle download, also this page. |
I have been a driving instructor for almost a decade now, since shortly after it became dangerous to be alone with those who might possibly be on a government watch list: Muslims, Mafia operatives, people who had protested government activities…in short, types one often finds within the crumbling corridors of ancient university buildings. But that makes it all the more interesting. The dual controls have come in useful more than once, although that one Iranian man is suing me for breaking his nose. As I’ve been at pains to point out, I didn’t break it. The airbag broke it when it went off in response to my pounding the brakes while grabbing the wheel so we would hit that stone wall. Hitting the wall seemed preferable to me to being riddled in the ribs with the heat he was packing…And after the mumblings in Farsi or something when I told him he’d be ready to drive in Britain a month after all the Muslim Virgins got knocked up….Well, you can see why driving into a brick wall and breaking his nose was the better choice. As far as I know, he never even went to hospital. He probably just went home to his mates and had one of them set it with the flat of his hand. Anyway, I never saw him again, a fact that almost made me into a believer.
I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.―P. D. James
I’d like to say the insurance company had been as easy to deal with in the end. But the insurance company was less amused than I was. “Mr. Barker. I’m not at all sure we should pay for this,” was the first thing out of the mouth of that simpering female sent by Comparethemerkins.com to “adjust” my claim. I couldn’t help noticing that she was one of those daft females who paint their lips way outside the actual lip line, as if that would make them look like Angelina Jolie. This one not only lacked pouty lips; she had almost no lips at all, just a thin, compressed line where one might assume her lips, if any, would meet. Nonetheless, I had the feeling she was pretty good at talking, and I’d not like much of it.
I stared off into space. I was not thinking about how to get her to approve my claim. I was thinking about whether I could get past the lip liner and take advantage of the luscious cleavage peeking out from her silk man-tailored shirt, all bordered in lace. And then I remembered who I was. All that stuff had been knocked out of me by paying three alimonies―and the assurance from my current wife that things would go badly for me if I even thought about hanky-panky. Plus the current Biff had transferred his allegiance to her. I was now in danger from the crushing jaws of a canine conjugal relations cop if I so much as looked at my wife wrong. I didn’t know how it happened. I was pretty good on assessing stuff like driving skills, but women? Please.
Did I fear my wife just because Biff was her knight in furry armour? No. I still had the padded gauntlets I had used to teach Biff to be Biff-like in the first place. Did I fear her because she was an American? Hell no. I feared her because she was an Italian-American and all her cousins and uncles had names like Rocco and “Lips” Morello and Toni “Tiger” Timpanelli. I swear. That one wasn’t an uncle, though, it was an aunt. And what with all the body and facial hair, the woman did look like Tony the Tiger, the popular cartoon promoting American breakfast cereal. I had no illusions, though. I figured “Toni” was a lot more fearsome than American breakfast cereal, and that’s saying a lot.
Back in the moment, I attended to business.
“It was clearly an accident,” I replied. I pulled myself up to my full height, six feet and six inches of motley flesh hung loosely on my elegantly cadaverous frame.
“It is incumbent upon driving instructors not to allow harm to befall innocent bystanders because of the lurid driving habits of some students. Since I hadn’t known what he was pulling from under his jalaba or whatever they call those shroud-like garments Arab men wear, I had to get the car away from any point where it would do harm to the public.”
She still looked sceptical. Apparently, she had never been in a car with a learner driver who spoke little English and seemed to bear some animus, in fact, toward not only his new adopted nation, but certain representatives thereof. Namely me.
I continued trying to get Ms. Lipless to see it my way. “Clearly it was an accident, and a far less horrific one than would have occurred had he shot me and his lack of skill sent the car out of control and into a crowd of pedestrians, for god’s sake.”
“Mr. Barker. There was no gun.”
“But still…if there had been…..”
“THERE. WAS. NO. GUN.”
I hung my head. What else could I do? It was obviously time to make Ms. Compare think I was an imbecile and take pity on me. According to The Cobra (and two of the three other wives), that shouldn’t be hard. And it wasn’t.
“I couldn’t know that, could I? I’m not a police profiler. Heck, I have a hard time remembering my name. How can I be expected to remember a whole bunch of characteristics that might mean a person is a criminal, or even a dodo? I have all I can do to keep the learners from filling the hospitals. I’m not trying to claim what I do is valuable, like saving citizens money in their insurance claims as you do. But I like to think my job serves an important function in society, and that by ruining a car, I might have saved lives.”
She still wasn’t convinced, despite the flattery. I could tell because her lips had disappeared even further.
“And all my student suffered was a broken nose. It probably served him as a badge of honour. He could claim he got it in the jihad.”
She almost burst out laughing.
“You do have a way about you, Mr. Barker,” she said. “I have absolutely no reason to approve a claim for damage done when you set off the air bags by causing an accident on purpose. However, considering the extent of your creativity in explaining why I should grant your claim for compensation, I have no choice but to authorize payment.”
Nah, that’s not really what she said. She narrowed her already beady little eyes, turned the lips downward until they looked more like a garrotte being prepared for use than human tissue, and issued a proclamation through clenched teeth. “I’ll OK this. I have had quite enough of being put upon by foreigners moving to the UK and taking advantage of our social safety net, especially when they hate us to begin with. APPROVED!”
I was astonished. I gave myself credit for political correctness and human kindness, both of which run but thinly in my veins. And I gave her credit for being ethnocentric and chauvinistic and therefore politically incorrect as well. And I also credited her with human kindness to me. Indeed, I figured I had sucked up every molecule of human kindness she had stored for the week.
So Ms. Compare approved the payout for the car and for the wog’s nose. Whew. And please excuse the ethnic slur. I’m still not my politically correct self…but don’t hold your breath waiting.
Then she gave me her version of a smile; fortunately, I figured it out quickly and did not offer her a Pepto-Bismol tablet for her stomach. We ended up parting friends, although I can’t say I ever wanted to see her again for any reason.
CLICK Below to buy the digital version of Crash Course.
CLICK Below to buy the digital version of Crash Course.
