by Pam Cunningham
I once read a blurb about a guy who plowed a makeshift armored bulldozer into his neighbor’s garage after a dispute over their property line. This guy would mow his yard to point A, and the neighbor would mow to point B, resulting in a foot-tall no-man’s-inch between the two houses. The neighbor’s Caddy died when bulldozer-man got proactive, and I couldn’t help but think: how cool would it be to have your own tank?
I could 'doze into the lot at Target and take any parking space I wanted, or convince a pushy salesman to get off my porch with a mere nod toward the driveway—Still think I need three years of Ladies’ Home Journal, Sparky?—as word quickly spread through the neighborhood that you don’t mess with the girl in the bulletproof tractor.
The desire to be driving something manufactured by Caterpillar rather than Mitsubishi reared its ugly head this afternoon when I was driving down Wright Street and saw Jane Hamlin, English Department secretary and Champaign’s very own Elmira Gulch, step off the curb in front of Lincoln Hall. (I’m pretty sure I only imagined the flying monkeys.) She looked startled, then gave me her best eat-shit-and-die glare before continuing across the street, nose in the air and irremovable broomstick up her ass. Forget the bulldozer, I wanted a steamroller.
Then again, I thought as I watched Jane’s expression descend from contempt to surprise to horror: you can’t floor a steamroller.
Pam Cunningham quenches her thirst for adventure via the Web so she
never has to actually come in contact with the great outdoors.
