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Blue Form-A-Gasket - A Tragedy. 4-11-2000
Once upon a time, there was a girl. She called herself a chick, actually, and her given name was Cassie. Cassie's father, who had the unfortunate character flaw of taking a dumb joke and repeating it many times over for a prolonged period of time, began to call her "Scooter," because she always had knee problems, and once he threatened to just chop her leg off and fit it with a wheel to avoid any future problems. Thus, she was dubbed Scooter, and even though it annoyed her mildly in the beginning, she eventually came to accept the fact. And so it was that fateful Saturday morning.
It was sunny and bright out. A day to remember. Al, Scooter's father, was outside working on his car, and reveling, as always, in the glory of lying in the dirt, twisting metal pieces, and smearing grease and oil all over oneself, until something went dreadfully wrong. Al was out of Blue Form-A-Gasket(TM). In his dignified, torn, and greasy state, he found he was in no condition to drive to the local NAPA Auto parts store, right down the street, to buy some more. He puzzled for all of five minutes on what a man in his same position would do, and making a decision to send her to buy some, summoned his daughter. Scooter had just emerged from her morning shower, and through she was very lovely, nobody knew it, for she was, perhaps, a bit of a slob. Today, she was clad in an almost-a-size-too-large pair of army-green khaki cargos, an oversized tee shirt with a map of the New England states printed across the back, and slightly tattered hiking boots (Payless, $15). To tarnish her beauty yet some more, her hair had not been combed that morning, because Scooter was decidedly too busy doing ab crunches and reading her latest Edgar Allen Poe story to note her haggard appearance in the mirror.
Unfortunately, our lovely heroine Scooter was really rather naive. She was a homeschooled chick, and of the sort to do such stupid brainless things as write, read, sing, email, make up alter-egos for herself, and other such things that would be expected from a poor chick of her educational status. She had no way to realize that she was not, in fact, an effective trend-setter, and thus did not have any way to know that flared pants were all the rage at the time, and if she had, she probably wouldn't have cared much anyway. Yet another thing she did not know was that she was dreadfully passé, and "out" in the way she spoke, especially by using words like, "spiffy", "neat-o", coolies, and wowie.
Hence, shoddily-clad as she was, she stupidly accepted the money her father gave her to buy the Form-A-Gasket. As she made her way carelessly to the store, she hummed a long string of hymns and thought about whether she should re-read "The Raven", or try for something more risky. She eventually came to the store and wisely chose the door with "Open" plastered on it. As she floated through the doors, several men examining spark plugs turned to sneer at the odd girl. Yes, even the boy behind the counter sneered for a moment, but Scooter faithfully strode on until she came to the counter.
As she reached to her hair and pushed it behind her ear, exposing her face, the boy behind the counter gasped. Beauty such as this was not fit for a lowly NAPA store! He opened his mouth, and silently formed the words, "May I help you?" Cassie fell entranced by his spiked hair, and somehow managed to ask for the Form-A-Gasket. He, stunned, excused himself to fetch it, and while searching the stock shelves for the blue goop in a tube, found himself thinking how he could not allow the girl to leave without declaring his love for her. At the exact same moment, Scooter was secretly thinking about the gum she stepped in on her way into the store. Then, a minute later, her thoughts turned to the boy again, and she thought about the absolutely astounding amount of gel he must have needed to keep his hair looking like that, and how gorgeous he looked with that astounding amount of gel on his head.
As the boy returned to the counter, he said, in a voice to melt Scooter's heart, "That will be $4.95," and it was then that Scooter knew that this was not your average motorhead - this boy was a poetic soul. Scooter realized that for all these long years, he must have had to lock up his true feelings, his beautiful soul, all locked inside of himself, simply to please his demanding parents, who owned the NAPA store.
Scooter reeled from the knowledge she possessed, and thought that if she could run away with this boy, she would be truly happy. She dreamed of the children they would play with in front of a warm hearth in their living room, and of herself cooking homemade meatloaf to serve him for supper. And she kept on daydreaming until an extremely large and disgruntled truck driver behind her poked her in the shoulder and asked her to hurry up. Scooter, embarrassed, shoved her hand into her left cargo pocket, and pulled out a five dollar bill. She pondered on how to sign her name on the receipt. She, after a second's deliberation, signed her true name, "Cassie." The love of her life would know her true name. She silently bid him goodbye as he handed her back a nickel.
As Scooter left the store, she wept bitterly inside of herself, knowing that their love was forever doomed. At the very same moment, the boy knew that he would have to live out the rest of his days greasing carburetors, instead of writing beautiful prose to his beautiful love, Cassie. She would never know his soul, would only know him as a seller of auto parts, or so he thought. He, also, wept inwardly.
Scooter never did return to the NAPA Auto store. She wrote occasionally. Sad, lonesome poems about death, black abysses, and dirty car grease, all a far cry from the happy songs she used to compose. She filled her days with algebra homework, and often chewed absent-mindedly on pencils, until she wore her teeth down to stubs. All of this while she still dreamt of her love that never was. This continued until, in her mid-thirties, she met an overweight, yet handsome, man who was inspector number twenty-five in a large yo-yo factory, and who loved her despite her small teeth. They eloped to suburban Ohio and were morbidly happy for the rest of their lives.
In Scooter's wake, the boy returned to selling auto parts. For a while he searched the far regions of Massachusetts, asking everyone he passed if they had seen a girl named Cassie. Unfortunately, because she was known as Scooter, nobody knew her true name, and thus he was turned away by every soul he asked. He made a meager, sorrowful living, dreaming of the girl he knew as Cassie, the Form-A-Gasket girl of his dreams. Eventually, after many years of depression, he found a beauty he had never known in auto parts, and after many attempts, decided that he would never be all that good at poetry.
And they lived happily ever after.
THE END