I drove my car along Mona Vale Road heading south and decided to stop for gas. I say ‘gas’ instead of ‘petrol’ because anybody outside the UK and Australia (and possibly New Zealand) knows that calling it ‘gas’ is absurd because it’s not a gas, it’s a liquid. I use the word ‘gas’ only because it annoys certain people and if you are one of those people then fistpump. This is because some people - let’s call them dickheads - are hung up on the word 'gas' as used by Americans, which is actually an abbreviation of the word ‘gasoline’ and has nothing to do with it being a gas, but ironically enough everything to do with it being a liquid. In fact, the word ‘gasoline’ is originally from England and according to my dictionary of entemology, it is a small ‘pancrustacean hexapod invertebrate’. But even more revealing is the definition given by its sister publication, the dictionary of etymology, where gasoline is just a ‘light, volatile liquid obtained from the distillation of petroleum’. Notice that it says it’s a liquid? Yeah. Like I said, it’s just a simple abbreviation and similarly to our American friends, we  use ‘pet’ instead of ‘gas’. So in the UK and Australia (and possibly New Zealand) instead of the exhausting utilisation of the full word ‘petroleum’ we say ‘pet’. So we say, “I’m running low on pet, I think I’ll stop at the pet station and get some pet.” I just realised we say petrol - not pet - but pet would be better. At least neither group uses ‘gasohol’ which was the original name presumably used by assholes. 

Anyway as I was saying, I was driving in St Ives and I needed fuel. Yeah, let’s just use fuel from now on, because this is exhausting. I pulled into the service station on the main road which I mentioned above and don’t feel the need to mention again because it will take up too many words and kill the flow of the sentence and just make it too damn long. On arrival, I spotted a small Mazda convertible and it was red or maybe yellow. I think it was yellow. There was a man standing next to it and he was wearing pastel coloured clothes. He wore bright yellow pants, white boat shoes, blow dryed hair with highlights, white rimmed sunglasses and a pink shirt with big collars with an open neck and he topped off the ensemble with a lime green or light blue sweater draped over his shoulders. He looked like he’d been dipped in Miami Vice. Perhaps the most tragic thing, or maybe the most gratifying thing - I still haven’t decided - it was only eight years ago - is that he wasn’t dressed up for a party or attempting irony. I think we all have a mechanism for spotting a person who’s dressed ironically and mine works great. I thus remain confident he wasn’t headed for an 80s themed party. Yes, he dressed like that for real. His little Mazda was parked next to the first bowser on the left side of the station. I know exactly what you’re thinking: So this meant the one if front of him was free and available, presumably because the person who was in front of him had stopped for pet before him and had therefore finished filling up before he’d had a chance to run another comb through his increasingly porous and fragile hair. Yes, it was free, so I drove around his little Mazda and stopped in the empty space. This meant I had effortlessly, smoothly and other adverbs ending in -ly stopped in front of his little car and next to the free bowser. I didn’t need to back up or anything, it was like I’d done it a million times before. 

He threw up. His hands I mean, he threw up his hands and all while the keys to his little Mazda dangled from his manicured fingers and sparkled in the phoebean light. Then he slapped his hands down into his yellow pants and threw the very same hands up again. Then he slapped his hands down again (still the same hands - keep up). He was making like I was responsible for those ‘easy open’ packages of ham that never work and you end up having to cut the bastard open with a knife and then you use one goddamned slice of ham for your sandwich and then put the mangled package back in the fridge only to have the 90% of the ham you haven’t touched dry out so much it becomes inedible/a treat for the dog.

Actually, forget the ham thing, it would be more accurate to say he was acting like I’d just pooed in the front seat of his car. I should use the correct preposition ‘on’ there, because it was a convertible car and his roof was down. In order to poo in the front seat one would presumably have to be in the car and sitting on the seat. You see what I mean is this: you have to sit on the seat to shit in the seat. What I mean by my simile is that he was acting like I’d gone over to the car, pulled my pants off, (I use those velcro ones strippers use) climbed onto the bonnet of the car, sat on the windscreen and then did a poo on the front seat. You know - with my ass hanging over and my bare feet gripping onto the windscreen. Just to be clear, I didn’t do that, it’s just a simile. I only point all this out because prepositions are so fine-tuned and I find them fascinating and I didn’t want to pass up an opportunity to point out the subtle differences in expression when a convertible being shat in was on the cards. Sorry, that should be when a convertible being shat on was on the cards. Anyway, I’m sure you get the idea. 

So yes, he was angry that I’d dared use the driveway as intended in a public utility. I’d created a minor inconvenience for him. Specifically, he had to turn his steering wheel slightly to the right to go around my car. As he continued slapping himself, he also seemed to be looking around for support from a non-existant crowd of onlookers. It was as if he was saying: “Hey, everybody, this guy just climbed up onto my Mazda convertible here and pooed in the driver’s seat!” To which I would of course reply: “No, I pooed on the seat of your convertible because of the ass hanging over thing with the windscreen and everything - wanker.” He was delusional enough to think people would want to see this for themselves and join him in his quest for justice. This dramatic tantrum played out in the theatrical ratio of my rear vision mirror and conveniently enough, this reminded me to grab some popcorn after filling up. I got out of my car, then I heard him yell, “Oh, come on! Are you serious?” I’d pulled in front of him to get petroleum distillate for my car and this guy was acting like a real gasohol. His bleached highlights seemed even whiter with rage (and he was red anyway, so my guess is his fake tan did a pretty good job of covering his reddened face). And his eyes presumably raged behind his white rimmed sunglasses. That’s my guess - they were mirrored (of course). You see, what Ken hadn’t realised was he’d picked a fight with the smartass eqivalent of Don Corleone. I may be stupid, but I’m a supreme smartass. There is a direct, inversely-proportional relationship between my stupidity and my smartassery. A potent asymmetery if you will. When I was growing up in the 1980s my father often called me ‘smartass’ and my theory is that this speech act formed a potent compound comprising of a) direct identity and b) determination to not do what my father told me to er, do. As a result, I identified as a smartass long before the emergence of the weird-looking bearded head of identity politics. I used to walk around saying that I felt like a smartass trapped in the body of another smartass who wanted to get out and express his natural smartassery instincts. It used to confuse the hell out of my high school guidence counsellor who presumably wrote ‘smartass’ in my file, or is that on my file? Anyway, I was so determined not to do anything my father told me to do and that isn’t my fault. It’s the fault of the ancient code deep in my DNA that told me it was time to leave my father’s cave and find my own cave and start breeding and hunting independently. In fact, my father called me a smartass so much that when I went to Sunday School for the first time, I wrote my name down as ‘Smartass’. I was five. I’m certain that from 1984-1989 my father, who was often busy, forgot my name. I say this because the moniker was applied even when I wasn’t being a smartass. Yes, even when I passed the potatoes at dinner, or when I ran to fetch a screwdriver. My dear reader, I humbly ask you, how can you be a smartass when you’re simply passing a tuna mornay or potato salad? How can you fetch a non-existent adjustable wrench with even a hint of smartassery? The reason I compare myself with Don Corleone is because of that subplot in The Godfather Part Two where the timid Italian woman comes to the Godfather for help because her landlord is a prick. When the young Godfather (played by Robert DeNiro) asks the landlord to ‘you know like, take it easy man’, the landlord just tells him, ‘you know like, get lost man.’ Then the Godfather makes a simple request, ‘Just ask around about me’ he says. Well, not long after, the prick returns, but this time he’s grovelling, he’s all humble and terrified, full of fear and consternation, dismayed, anxious and distressed beyond disquietude. You know - scared shitless. The prick’d obviously asked around as requested and the locals in the neighbourhood explained to the landlord how the Godfather didn’t have a very well developed sense of humour. The little Italian lady gets to keep her apartment, gets a discount on the rent and she’s even allowed to have a dog. The landlord on the other hand gets to avoid having his teeth used as marimbas by a wheezing goon called Salvatore. Naturally, the dude at the St Ives service station having a hissy fit, got both barrels from my trusty smartass shotgun. He immediately retreated inside the shop, and pretended to look at snacks or hairspray or something. I can’t remember all the stuff I said but I stopped because there was a mechanic sitting on a milk crate outside the workship having a smoke and laughing his ass off. I stopped because he was a hefty fellow and he was doing that cough-laugh hefty folks do before they go purple and keel over from a pulmonary infarction. I didn’t want to have to explain to his grieving widow that her husband died because of a guy with puffy pants, bleached eyebrows and three feet of bouffant acting like he owned the place. So I ceased my smartassery and after he’d caught his breath, I had the following conversation with the mechanic:

“How long have you worked here?” I asked. 

“Dunno, ‘bout twenty years.” 

“Have you ever seen anything like that before?” 

“Only in the ‘80s,” he replied.