Friday, March 10, 2006

That's My Van!


I hope my friend doesn't mind me posting this but I just can't resist.

There's this bar on Main Street. It's owned by some friends of a friend. My friend's name is, well, let's call him Doug. The owners names . . . call them Tom. They're both named, Tom. Two Toms.

Every day my friend, Doug, a lobsterman (that's the Moon Dog connection), drives past the bar on his way home from work. At least three days a week, as he drives by, he sees a Michelob Light van parked outside. It so happens this van is driven by a friend of Tom's and Doug's who is the regional rep for Michelob. The rep typically double parks in front of the bar or finds a nearby parking spot and he either leaves the keys in the van or sometimes he leaves the keys in and actually leaves the van running, then he goes inside to make a sale and maybe have a beer. Just one beer. (Yeah, right.) Bear in mind, here in Maine, all of us, almost all of us, leave our keys in the ignition all the time, no matter where we are. It's crazy, but we do it anyway. Back to my story. . . .

Whenever Doug sees his buddy's Michelob van, Doug parks his own vehicle, jumps in the Michelob van, and drives it around the corner to another parking spot in town, so that when his friend comes out of the bar, his friend has to search for the van before he can drive home.

The other day, as Doug is driving home, he sees the Mich van outside the bar. He parks his truck, jumps in the already running van, and drives it off. But this time, instead of parking it somewhere else, he pulls around the corner, stops in front of the big picture windows of the bar, rolls down the van window, sticks his arm out, and flips his friend the bird.

Except, it's not his friend standing at the bar talking to one of the two Toms, it's his friend's boss, whom Doug has never met.

The boss, with an incredulous "someone's steeling my car" look on his face, points a finger at Doug and says something like: "What the- Who the-" And then Doug spins the wheels and drives off.

Doug finally gets up the nerve to park the car and go to the bar to apologize. Story should end there but it doesn't. Doug sits next to the boss, orders a Budweiser. Tom comes over to him and whispers: "Steal a guy's car, least you can do is order one of his beers."

-seabgb

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