Last Christmas, I made my feelings on peas very clear. Mum poured them onto my plate, as she does every year. I then picked up the plate, looked her dead in the eye, tossed the contents out of the window and said, in my most serious tone: “Peas was never an option.”
It’s one of my better lines, and as a result, I didn’t have to eat any peas that year (I just had to go outside, pick up the plate and then apologise to Mum). I wonder what I can avoid this year, just by standing my ground? Maybe I can get out of the annual family review of how all of our vehicles are going; that is such a drag.
“Oh yeah, I found a new mechanic near me. Milperra is the best place for it, since they got new auto electrical guys all the way from Sydney.” Thanks for that, Uncle Tim. I’m so glad a special place is cleared every single year between the main course and Christmas pudding to make way for this sizzling discussion, the likes of which most definitely needed to happen. Perhaps I need to start a new discussion; one in which the dangers of cars are fully highlighted.
I’ll look up some facts about how cars are polluting the Earth, and that one fact about how if everyone in China had a car, all the trees in the world would be dead in a month.
See, the thing that makes that fact so great is that there’s nothing wrong with people from other countries getting cars. If we can all have cars, they can all have cars. It’s a just and fair situation, but it means the extinction of all life. If you have a problem with that, then you’re a discriminatory Jim.
I have no problem with cars and mechanics overall, of course, but I just don’t want every single Christmas day to be derailed by talking about them.
I have a car. It’s fine. Everyone’s car is fine. They are not babies who grow up and get into mischief; they sit there doing nothing when we don’t look at them. I know you got a great deal at an auto electrician in the Milperra area, but that’s IT.
I should start going on holiday for Christmas.
-Tony