Over the past couple of years I’ve confessed to you, my readers, very personal acts of stupidity, thoughtlessness and downright dangerous behavior.  Reading these, you have borne witness to just how mind-numbingly foolish I have been in my life and you may very well hold a low opinion of me for it – and I can’t say that I blame you.  If I kept reading about one fool’s ill-advised episode after another, I’d begin forming an assumption of the same color.  I would hope, however, that most of you have tried to balance the stories you’ve heard me tell with the fact that they happened so very long ago.  Not that this has any bearing on the following tale of idiocy – I just wanted to get it off my chest. This week’s “adventure” was due to, yes, a lack of forethought, but I like to think that it was mostly owed to inexperience, rather than stupidity.  Judge for yourself.

This incident occurred when I was seventeen.  I was living with my mother in an apartment complex on the seacoast where I owned an old Chevy Nova four-door that had many, many mechanical problems.  Problems notwithstanding, I drove that car everywhere, but on this particular day in the apartment’s parking lot, things got a little hairy.

First you must understand the parking lot’s layout – there were two tiers, an upper and a lower, both back-to-back.  The lower tier sat about four feet below the upper tier, the one on which I was parked.  It was about four in the afternoon when I hopped into my Nova and started it up.  It moaned with its usual groans and complaints, but eventually fired up.  The vehicle had an automatic transmission, so I applied the brake and shifted the car into drive, but instead of dropping into gear like it should, the shifting lever just moved easily back and forth without having any noticeable effect.  I shut off the car and went inside to call my friend Louie whose father owned a garage.  Louie had been working in his dad’s business since he was old enough to hold a wrench, so who better to turn to?

Louie told me that it sounded like the linkage between the shift lever and the transmission had “let go”.  Seeing dollar signs pulsating in my head, I asked if there was a workaround.  He told me that if I could reach the transmission with my hand, I could manually shift the car into drive, reverse or park simply by turning the selector that the linkage had been connected to.  He told me that the car should probably be running when I did it, since the “neutral-safety switch” wouldn’t allow the car to start when the tranny was in “drive”.  He was also kind enough to emphasize that I must have the parking brake engaged or, since the car would be running, it would take off as soon as I put it in gear.  Good ol’ Louie.  I thanked him profusely, then returned to the car.

The first thing I did was push the parking brake lever to the floor, which went down smoothly, accompanied by the satisfying sound of its ratcheted clicks.  Then I started the car – so far, so good.  I then laid down on the ground and slid myself under the car behind the front tire on the driver’s side, feeling for the transmission selector.  While grasping around I located the end of what seemed to be a disconnected rod – one that I felt the other end of might be attached to the shift lever inside.  So, Louie was right and now I just needed to find that damned selector switch.  I groped around for a few more seconds until I found what I believed to be what I was looking for.  Getting a firm hold of the selector, I turned it in one direction, but it wouldn’t move.  I turned it in the other direction and it clicked once – and the car started moving backward.

Somehow, by the grace of God, Allah, or just pure luck, I managed to swing my body out from under the car without getting run over by it.  The front tire rolled past my head with barely inches to spare and as I got up to my feet, I witnessed my 1972 Chevy Nova four-door back itself over a ledge then drop down with a crash onto the lower parking lot.  Still on its wheels and still running in reverse, the car continued across the lower parking lot with a frantic 17 year-old chasing feverishly behind (or in front, to be precise).  The car reached the other side of the lot before I could get to it, but thudded harmlessly into an embankment on the other side and stopped – almost perfectly lined up in a lower tier parking spot.

So many things could have gone worse that day.  My chest, arms, hands or head could have easily been crushed had I not removed myself in time.  There could have been a car parked on the lower tier where my car fell or parked where my car finally ended up.  There could have been children playing in the lower lot.  I shudder to think about it.

It turns out my parking brake’s proper functionality was one of the many, many mechanical problems my old Nova had.  The car continued to run for about six months after this incident until I finally had enough of its problems and sold it for $50.  For those six months, though, rather than fix the parking brake, I just changed from “park” to “drive” by reaching down to the transmission from under the hood instead of under the car.  I learned not to park on hills because in order to put the car in “park” I had to shut it off, step out, open the hood and reach down in the nether-regions of the drivetrain and turn the switch to “park”.  I learned not to park where I’d need reverse, because it was just a pain in the ass to do so.  And as it turns out, the “neutral-safety switch” is located on the steering column, so starting the car when the tranny was in “drive” was not a problem at all.

That Nova was my third car, but not the last one you’ll hear about, should you choose to honor me with your continued reading.  Maybe next time I’ll tell you about the kid who flew over my hood when he ran into my Impala with his bicycle.  Believe me when I tell you, he was not the only one to have a stupid adventure that day.