Strange Confessions: Spare the Car, Fine the Child

Strange Confessions: I was dreadfully afraid to get sick in the car while I was growing up, because I didn’t want to get fined for littering if I threw-up out the window.

I have a vague recollection of a conversation with one or more of my parents regarding those signs you see on the freeways warning of fines if you littered. All sorts of scenarios went through my mind regarding string, rice, ice, apple cores. But the most perplexing thing that was given birth in my brain was, “Is vomiting out the car window considered littering?”

I sincerely put forth my query and they told me that, yes indeed, throwing-up out the car window was littering. “Who has to pay?” I asked. I was informed that they would pay but they would expect remuneration for the foul fine. I doubt if my parents ever said remuneration to me, and I never considered an upset stomach coating the black asphalt speeding perilously by, to be a work that they had done for me. Who were these policemen who would hate a child enough to watch them speeding by as the green faced warrior of warning and chaos spewed forth its venom and then pursue them to the ends of the earth just to make sure fines were distributed to the innocent? It was just an undigested bit of beef or blot of mustard or an underdone potato that caused all the mess anyway… how could they consider fining the poor sick lad who didn’t want to be slapped for mussing the car all up?

My mind pondered this for some time, and then I ingested the information, took it for what it was worth and vowed never to get sick enough to vomit out a car window.

As some trigger in my brain released this long forgotten information, I wondered at its genesis. Did my dad, for as the more I write the more I recall, tell me this just to have a bit of fun? Or did he tell me this because his dad told him? My Grandfather died before I was born and the only thing my dad told us about him was that he owned a spaghetti factory by the union station tracks near downtown Salt Lake, and that he punished him once for messing with a dishwasher and broke his arm. I also recall a picture of him someone, somewhere had of him strolling down the streets of downtown Salt Lake City in finely pleated slacks, polished shoes, double-pocketed button up shirt and a straw hat perched nonchalantly on his noggin. Did he tell his son stories to mess with him? My dad was an only child. I am the middle.

Perhaps I recall this story to purge it from who I am. Many people find it a ridiculous notion that our relationship with our fathers drives our relationship with God. I many times feel as if I am God’s comedy release. Even now, with so many things frustrating and mocking me because of my own fate, makes me feel that God isn’t angry with me… He just likes having a good laugh at me once in a while. Purge it. Purge it. Purge it. Thank you for the recall of such innocence of youth, brain, for it is to purge bad theology that effects my heart. Nonchalant hat tips to my God.

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