#spenglerisims

His natural choice is the Ecto-1. It's durable, stable, and has enough mass that it's not going to leap forward if you push the gas a little too hard, and it's got good shocks for a steady ride. Trevor thinks it's lame he's gotta learn how to drive with his overly cautious cringefail grandpa.

But here's the thing. Learning how to operate a car is one thing. So is reading about safety and emergency procedures. But actually learning how to control a car in a slide or a spin is a totally different thing, and Egon is well aware of this. So on top of general driving, he also teaches Trevor 1: what it feels like when a vehicle starts to move weird and 2: how to respond to specific loss-of-control situation. This also involves knowing the vehicle you're driving, what it can and cannot do, how much space it occupies and how to visually tell how much clearance you have between the vehicle and an obstacle.

And a drift is a pretty good way to learn the feel of a vehicle and how to get comfortable with counterintuitive actions, like steering in the 'wrong direction' when you come into the turn. And it as the added benefit of being fun, and once Trevor figures out that these are not going to be slow, boring driving lessons, he is suddenly stoked to be learning to drive from his grandpa.

And right about then in when Callie shows up to find her dad in the passenger seat and her son doing donuts and just sort of stands there watching until they notice her. Trevor is excited. Egon thinks he's probably going to get yelled at, and he is correct.

Egon did drugs For Science in college; he learned many things about himself and there were two or three Incidents(tm)

Still makes the best weed brownies though

How he discovered his kinks and what parts of his psyche and personality they tap into

Specifc to the Carbon Dating college AU:

Why everyone thinks that weird maintenance closet on the fourth floor of Bemis house at MIT was the scene of a murder

The alternate version of the wisdom teeth video

Specific to the Rocket Car isotope:

Now, retrieving an M48 Patton tank is almost always going to be An Affair in and of itself, depending on just how badly damaged it is. And if it was damaged enough that it couldn't be driven back to base, that means you've gotta send people out to get it, which requires a tank recovery vehicle (usually just another wholeass tank modified for towing) and also possibly do any repairs that it might need to even make it towable, and do so in the field.

This is what Piotr and his guys are doing when they discover it was a trap and they walked right into it.

So bullets are flying and people are diving for cover, of which there isn't much. Piotr is the guy in charge as far as the mechanics go, and he knows that the longer they sit there, the more losses they'll incur. Yeah, they've got a guy on the radio yelling for backup, but between that moment and when backup actually arrives, IF it arrives at all, is an unknown quantity and a lot can happen in that time frame. Their best bet is to get to the armored recovery vehicle and beat a hasty retreat while hoping the opfor doesn't have any anti-tank weapons.

He gives his dog tags to another guy, says the classic 'tell my wife and kid i love them' line, and then runs off. Miraculously, he's not instantly hit. Instead, when he gets to where the two vehicles are hooked together, he runs into an enemy soldier. Once again, he miraculously escapes injury or death by bayonet and instead brains the guy on reflex with the mini sledgehammer he had in his hand. Being close enough to see the effects of a hammer on a human head and watching the guy die is not something he was ever prepared for, and it's here that he locks up and gets hit. He takes shrapnel and a bullet, and in all the chaos he also bashes his head on one of the vehicles and ends up with a cracked skull and a brain injury.

So this motherfucker decides that, being the lead mechanic, it's his job to get the recovery vehicle unhooked from the tank they were gonna recover and pile as many guys into it as possible while providing moving cover for anyone else so they can get out of the middle of things and into a more defensible position. Of course, this is a dumb idea, but Piotr can be dumb as a box of rocks at times. He's a machinist, engineer and mechanic, not a tactician.

Backup does arrive, and being concussed and panicky because holy shit he's been hit, Piotr gets uncharacteristically combative and gets his ass sedated before he's flown out to a MASH unit where he's patched up. But when he starts to come out of sedation, he's still combative due to having a traumatic brain injury and keeps saying his last name isn't Spengler, it's Kowalski, so not only can they not immediately verify his identity, he gets put in a medical coma for a while and is expected to recover but have chronic problems at absolute best.

While he's out, a clerical error occurs where he's mistakenly listed as KIA, and the corresponding letter is sent out to his wife, who is understandably distraught. Luckily, the day after she gets the letter, Piotr is brought out of the coma and it turns out he's just one of those lucky sons of bitches who recovers completely from the brain injury and nobody really knows why or how. And once he's been awake for a day or so, he finds out that he was mistakenly listed as dead and goes 'Oh fuck I need to call my WIFE.' Which he does, and when he explains that this whole mess is because he was trying to be a hero, he gets chewed out in German loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear.

Not long after that, he finds himself on his way home on a medical discharge because the cartilage of his left knee got pretty fucked up and he's no longer fit to serve. But rather than a warm welcome, Piotr is greeted with a halfhearted slap across the face and another tirade of German as Ilse goes off about what an ass he is, how he scared the shit out of her, about what a dipshit move that was taking off his dog tags and trying to be a hero, etc etc. The ride home is quiet and tense, as is getting settled in for the evening.

Once everything is put away and they're behind closed doors though, he pulls Ilse in for a hug and apologizes for putting her through so much. er emotions finally come out and she just sort of collapses into the hug and cries. Seeing her crying over the whole thing has more of an impact on Piotr than her being pissed enough to slap him; he goes to sometimes comical lengths to avoid causing her distress or otherwise upsetting her or making her feel bad, even on accident, and knowing that he did it anyway really eats at him for awhile.

Over the decades though, the time Ilse almost murdered her husband for being a shit idiot becomes something of a running joke.