#monkey wrenches

[smbhax]

Captain Marvel Adventures #58, April 1946. C. C. Beck cover pencils & inks.

Info from Grand Comics Database

[oselatra]

Monkey wrenches

Junior is 17 now, and shows no interest in driving, or even taking the driving test. It's got his Old Man a little concerned, and not just because we're running a car service for one these days.

Junior is 17 now, and shows no interest in driving, or even taking the driving test. It's got his Old Man a little concerned, and not just because we're running a car service for one these days.

When Yours Truly was a lad, the world so much smaller and the TV with only three fuzzy channels plus AETN, we were itching to drive. We got a learner's permit literally the first day we legally could, then returned for our driver's license the first day we could get that. By then, we'd long since owned a car — a pearl white 1963 Chevrolet we bought for two-hunnert bucks at a garage sale — and turned half the bolts on it.

Cars are in The Observer's blood. By 10 years old, we could name the make, model and year of nearly every car we saw on the streets, Ford Model-T Ford to brand new, reading the unique Detroit fingerprint of bumper and taillight. Our dear old Pa's car stories were campfire tales when The Observer was young: the big block powered Impala he owned when he was dating The Observer's Ma and lived in Memphis — the car he claimed could make the run between the Tennessee line and Little Rock in just over an hour, flying low in the dark like a chrome-trimmed missile. The similarly hot Ford Galaxy he bought for a song, beat all the windows out of with a pickaxe, then took stock-car racing at the Benton Speedbowl a time or three before he barrel rolled it over a fence and Ma told him no more. Pa's trips back and forth to California as a lad, in the backseat of whatever junker his wanderlusting father could scrounge up in College Station, every time his father swearing this would be it, California for good this time, but always boomeranging back six months later, the gravity of Arkansas as strong then as it is now for native sons and daughters.

The Observer has our own car stories, of course, and we have sung them to Junior since his birth: Hermann Boring, the vanilla 1965 VW beetle we drove to college; Stealth Bomber, the blue 1984 Mercury Cougar we piloted on our first date with his mother; Leroy Brown, the '74 Dodge pickup we rattled around in as our fondness for that pretty girl turned to love and then to surety that she was The One; AT-AT, the white Chevy Blazer dear old Pa bought for us as a wedding present as we prepared to ship out for grad school in the snowy wastes of Iowa; Granny, the green Crown Victoria that bore Junior home from the hospital in Lafayette, and which saved his dear ol' Dad's life just before Junior's second Christmas when a guy ran a stop sign and T-boned her, sending us spinning into traffic and a multicar pileup.

What with all those nuts and bolts floating around in our DNA, we don't know what to do with Junior's automotive apathy. By his age, we'd already rebuilt a half-dozen engines and owned three cars. It's a different world, we suppose, with different priorities. The kids these days are able to go anywhere on the planet with just a few clicks of the keyboard. To a lot of them, Junior included it seems, a car isn't about freedom or individuality or motorvatin' out past the city lights. It's just a conveyance, no more tied to their identity than a refrigerator with wheels. Doesn't compute for The Observer, who can still name the make and model of nearly every car we see on the street. But so much of raising a child, we've found, is coming to grips with the idea that the goal isn't to make a clone of yourself in appearance, thought and deed. Some people never get that. Still, The Observer does wish Junior would go ahead and get his driver's license. He doesn't have to love cars like his Old Man did, but we'd sure like a ride to the grocery store every once in a while.

Monkey wrenches

[ianomoly]

Monkey Wrenches

No one can understand what goes on in your head

Maybe if they did

People would appreciate you for what you are

Unfortunately this reality doesn't honor agony

And now it's making you tear everything apart

I thought this went past wants

And was more about needs

And actually caring about the person

And not what they can physically offer

But everything's out of wack now

You see ultimatums

While I see open spaces

You don't want to leave your room

While I aim to live under the moon

This door will always be open

I've appreciated our friendship too long

But I won't be your whipping boy so you can feel better

I'm not my father's son anymore

I thought you were on the same vibe too

[teastime-blog]

Of Rainbows and Monkey Wrenches

I wanted to write about last week sometime last week, but oh my gosh, if it wasn't busier than I could have ever imagined. I still don't have time, but I just really want to make it before my thoughts just fly too far away to the back recesses of my mind.

First of all, I can't believe how fast last week went.

The best part of anything, and still yet, was on Monday I witnessed a FULL rainbow from end to end, with all the colours present clear as the day I saw it in. It was amazing, and I was so impressed, because I hadn't seen anything THAT magical in a very long time, and it felt important to me, and necessary to me that I witnessed that. I was even emotional, and my eyes were nearly moist with tears. I felt that I needed more... that I was in need of a good cry, actually. But it didn't come to that, but showed me, that this is something that I must be in need of.

At any rate, it was one beautiful sight, and it was nice to be able to witness something that glorious.

And then...

the rest of the week, the sky rained nothing but monkey wrenches.

In fact, the wind was hurling them my way... everything that was supposedly supposed to happen, timing-wise last week, actually just did not.

In fact, worst than that?  I will give you a great analogy of exactly what it was likely even though, it will sound as though I am being quite dramatic- but let me tell you this- it is one damn good analogy:

It was, as if, I was finally given the heart transplant that I had been working on, and hoping for, for so long, and waiting endlessly painfully for, in the interim, only to be told FINALLY that YES- we have found a HEART FOR YOU!

HOWEVER....

You can't have it quiiiiite yet! You must further prove that you are worthy of it.

It's like there it was, right there, I could reach out and almost touch it, and as I tried, it was pulled quickly away from me... aah, aah, aah, NOT YET, first before you can have the heart we've found for you, you must:

A. Run around the track 10 more times, the way you currently are.

B. Provide even more personal details about your private medical life.

C. And further prove you can afford to pay for it, for the rest of your life.

D. And be willing to accept the fact that we will be asking for several other things, as we see fit, when we see fit, and you will have no choice in the matter.

E. All the above.

I kid you not, that it was just like this last week.

And that there was a time factor, and I lost sleep over scrambling for everything "they" wanted, so that I could have my new "heart" that was in their hands.

Meanwhile, as this is the bulk of the project, that continued to remain a "No-Go" everything else that was related to it, kept rolling forward, as if everything was going to be fine, and yet it was not- since there was a huge delay- i.e. MONKEY WRENCH.

I just continue to feel like shit about everything.

I am being drained of every last drop of blood, in order to try to have something come together in order that things are someday going to be better for us, and I cannot even guarantee that! Because there are no guarantees. The other option is that things just get worse here, as they stay the same. So I'm really just "caught between a rock and a hard place" as they say. I'm pretty much dying either way.

This week hasn't started out much better.

I did everything they asked last week, everything,

and there are still two more things they want of me, before they'll give me my new "heart"... one of them is just astronomically insane and impossible... but I've already got some feelers out on how to have it go differently or faster, if that is even a possibility, after all, this whole process has officially been delayed once already, and from other things that happened today, we already found out it WILL be delayed yet again--

but further monkey wrenches or life blood from me, will delay it A LOT further, and I just don't know what more I can do for these people to make this happen.

I have already given everything I have to my name.

They have said they have my heart, but they don't want to give it to me yet.

And there are specific reasons for that, and because of what they are, this makes me especially sad, because people like me, should not have to work this much harder than the average person in order to make changes that would benefit them, and make their lives better.

It's all that I've wanted. What is so wrong with that, and why is it so difficult to have a little help and compassion for this?

After all, it's all coming from me and my own resources, so I mean heck, what more do they want?  I think it's highly unfair to be this scrutinized.

I just want one thing in my life, to finally go a way that I have hoped. Why should that be too much to ask?