The afternoon sun gleamed through that inevitable butt crack between the sun-visor and the part where the windshield connects to the car frame. I'm not sure what that part is called.
As far as I could tell, the road ran straight for a few hundred miles. However, I had no way of knowing this for sure since my map had been sucked into the air conditioning the day before. I now believe that Hondas are manufactured to purposely have every possible problem, but still manage great gas mileage. One such problem arose when I attempted to search for a new station.
Keeping my eyes on the road, I reached over and gripped the frequency knob, rolling it slowly, searching for anything, even political debates. Instead, all I heard was static and a faint click! I withdrew my hand. The knob came with it.
I rolled the window down slowly, using the hand crank (the same kind probably used by the pilgrims) and tossed the knob out onto the road.
The wind blew in and began to dry my eyes out. Fearful of having agitating contact lenses, I began to roll the window back in place. Unbeknownst for me, Arkansas has an unofficial motto: "Arkansas! Home of God-Defying Mutant Grasshoppers!"
As I struggled to roll the window up, one of these grasshoppers decided to send me a heart-felt welcoming by slamming face-first into my side view mirror with the impact force of your common ballistics missile, and then dropped against the window.
As disgusted as I was, I couldn't help but notice it bore a bizarre resemblance to Richard Nixon. I immediately began rolling faster, but one of the insect's school bus-sized legs became jammed in the Mysterious Window Slot where the window lives when you want a breeze. The window became inoperable.
The radio blared static at me, almost as if it wanted me to know that it loved "kshhhhhhhhhhh" so much that it couldn't stop saying his/her name. I tried to turn it down but the volume knob simply spun in place as uselessly as an outdoor ceiling fan. I then resorted to the most efficient form of repairs, Percussive Maintenance (I kicked the underside of the dashboard).
For most of my life I haven't had to worry about rebellion from inanimate objects, but as my foot made contact with the underside of the dashboard, the radio bravely lunged forward, obviously in attack mode, and tackled the gearshift, which wouldn't have been a problem for most cars, but I had foolishly let a high school shop class tinker with the transmission, and they had politely switched it around. So when the radio smacked into the ancient handle, the car was instantly thrown into park.
So there I was, driving the Anti-Christ of the automobile world, with a cat-sized grasshopper jammed in the window (its eyes had begun to glaze over, something I had previously thought only possible for creatures with souls), and then a kamikaze radio throws my vehicle into park at upwards of seventy miles per hour.
Needless to say, my car was yanked off the road and rolled into the ditch. I am pleased to note, however, that the grasshopper was dislodged, its corpse landing on a nearby dead armadillo (mating season?).
I staggered drunkenly from the wreck and sat at the top of the ditch. A slightly altered bit of song came to mind:
Here I sit,
Broken-hearted
Came to Arkansas
And my car flipped.
I find it catchy in its own way.
The sun was finally beginning to set, something that would have been good had I still been driving but now it meant I would be stuck alone in the dark in Flatland, Arkansas. At night. Alone. In the dark.
