Memories are worse than bullets

i mean, imagine you're gp and you go to red bull racing in the hopes of being race engineer to four time world champion sebastian vettel but then vettel leaves the team and for a while, you race engineer kvyat. which is less grandiose than you expected but it's fine. it's normal. you're used to it. then kvyat gets replaced by this kid. an 18 year old. and suddenly, you're not sure how it'll go because you're only one of two people in the sport (at the time) to have race engineered an 18 year old. then said kid wins his first ever race and you're the first person to congratulate him. the first out of seventy-something congratulations you give to him.

and this kid is feisty and terrifying on track and everyone and their mothers are saying he should be removed. but he's also the 'kid' in the team whom you look out for on track and whom you joking say "go away" to when he annoys you. whenever he crashes, you ask him if he's okay and sometimes he stars talking about the car first so you ask again and you'll probably keep asking till he replies. once he crashes into the barrier at 51g and you ask him if he's okay and he doesn't say anything for a while until he does. then he becomes a world champion and you scream just as loudly as he does. the first voice he hears across the finish line. his first congratulations yet again. and then he keeps on winning and you keep on growing closer.

he swears at everyone on the radio. at the other drivers, at the stewards, at the fans. anyone he can think of. and he laughs off the fines and says he doesn't care. but one time he swears at you and he says he regrets it because your family may have been watching. it's the one and only time he's apologised for his radios. whenever he gives you attitude, you tell him to do it himself but by the next lap, you're working as a team again. he promises to name a cat after you and he probably will. you tell him you won't race engineer another driver because you're no longer used to normal. you're used to him. and that's not fair on anybody.

he tells you when there's a lizard on track. he asks where you are when someone else talks to him instead of you. he reminds you to stay hydrated. most of the team he called a family slowly leaves but he stays so you stay too. and maybe the reason he still keeps calling this abandoned house a home is because you're still here.

and when he doesn't have a good race you reassure him that he did his best. you comfort him sometimes even though you don't need to. he wins four championships and you congratulate him on each one. and then when the fifth, and likely your last together, is just within reach, all your efforts fall short. you may still want to praise him for the comeback and for fighting against all odds but you will also likely never be the first to congratulate him for a championship again so you find yourself crying. and this time he comforts you.

and of course you have to think about your own career as you have every right to. and of course there's a better offer and while you can just take it, you ask him first. and he could ask you not to take it because you're the best race engineer he could ever have. but you're also his friend so he says yes, take the offer. and so in a year or two, you won't be the one congratulating him over the finish line. but you will still probably cheer for him, at least quietly.

I did not find my husband in this way.

In rural France it is apparently Known that one brings one’s own shopping bags to the grocery store. I was a visitor and had not been briefed and had no shopping bag. I saw that other people were able to conduct negotiations to purchase shopping bags, but I could not remember the word for “bag.”

“Can I have a box that is not a box,” I said.

The checkout lady looked extremely tired and said, “Un sac?” (A sack?)

When I phoned my mom during week two I tried to tell her that it was a bit cold in the sleeping bag at night. I stumbled around the word in German because for the love of god, I could remember the Germwn word for sleeping bag.

“Yeah so, it’s like a bag you sleep in at night?”

“And my mother must probably have thought I lost my mind. She just sighed and was like ‘So, a Schlafsack, yes?”

That afternoon I met up with some friends and was talking about the new job, and the new office, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the English word for pheasants. So I basically ended up bragging to my friends about “the very fancy chickens” we had outside the office.

She gets to Israel and is riding a bus for the very first time.

American: כמה ממון זה? (”How much money?” but in rather archaic language)

So in Biblical Hebrew the word for penis and weapon are the same. There is a verb meaning to arm, which modern Hebrew semanticly drifted into “fuck”: i.e. give someone your dick.

Except he doesn’t speak a lick of modern Greek, and the receptionist couldn’t speak English.  Or French.  Or German.  Or Italian.  (He tried all of them.)

Finally, in a fit of inspiration, he went upstairs and got his copy of Medea in the original Greek (you know, the stuff separated from modern Greek by two and a half thousand years).  He found the passage where Medea begs Jason to let her stay for one more day, went downstairs, and read it to the receptionist.

an airplane stuck on a toyota minivan

this miata built by rocket scientists

the mr2 boat

the nyan cat bmw that i think actually played the song at all times

the homer simpson car built by uranium workers

this limo whose brakes caught on fire

the dumbest corolla and supra wearing funny hats