Buick Contest

Once upon a time, I found myself driving a Buick along the New Jersey Turnpike, wearing nothing but a watch and sandals.  Your job is to guess which of the following answers is the true answer.  One of them is real.  The others were submitted by readers.  The reader who fools the most people with his or her submitted story will get to pick some kind of fun blog-related reward that I haven't dreamed up yet.  Those of you who guess correctly get to bask in a warm sense of achievement and personal well-being.  (Submissions have been edited a bit,  but still vary widely in writing style and amount of detail.)  Vote for the winner in the comments.

a) The pre dawn air was too sweet and that overcoat was too scratchy and my nightgown was somewhere at the bottom of my covers, and my cereal bowl was bone dry, and you know what?   I'm kissing off this tinted window privacy, because the air feels too good on my collarbone and the back of my neck.  Good morning cool breeze air bath.  This is the way to start the day.  Oat squares, here I come. 

b) One summer during college, a friend and I visited our freshman year roommate, who was spending the summer at her grandparent's house in Princeton.  The three of us stayed up all night drinking tonics and at about three in the morning we ran out of the house to go skinny dipping in the pond.  The roommate had forgotten that her grandparents were leaving in the middle of the night to drive to a weekend church retreat.  When we finished our swim, we found that the grandparents, not knowing we were outside, had locked us out of the house where our clothes were.  We talked about knocking on the neighbor's door, but my freshman roommate was mortified and couldn't go through with it.  We decided that the best thing to do was take take the grandparents' Buick (keys under the driver's side floor mat) and hotfoot it to my friend's place in New York.  I drove because I was the only one with shoes.

c) A couple of years after college I was at this wild party "down Jersey way" when the makeup of the crowd shifted and the atmosphere took a turn and things got strange.   At the time, I was relaxing in a hot tub with sandals handy (and my watch on).  I decided to leave, but didn't want to go over to the picnic table where my clothes were, so I beelined it to my friend's Buick.  She was too drunk to drive, so I took the wheel.  We flew along down the Jersey turnpike, giggling nervously and singing along to Frank Sinatra.  (She was fully clothed, but was wearing a sundress so had nothing to lend me.)

d) I was coming back north from a sailing race where everything had gone wrong.  We were taking turns driving a teammate's Buick, which had been overheating all trip.  Suddenly the hood started steaming and we pulled off to a service station in Maryland where they diagnosed a busted water pump.  We got it fixed, and it was dark when we pulled back onto the road.  We were punchy and dejected, but figured the worst was over.  I'd been driving maybe an hour when the temperature gauge crept higher and higher into the red.  One of us had heard that cars are less prone to overheating if you blast the heater, so we decided to try it.  It got hotter and hotter in the car, and we were tired and had a long way to go, so I suggested that we make a game out of taking off our clothes.  Everytime we passed a service station on the Jersey pike everyone in the car took off an item of clothing, until we had nothing left to take off.  We drove the rest of the way home in the buff, with the temperature gauge hovering just below the red and the heat on full blast.

e) A few summers ago I spent the weekend at the summer house of my best friend's parents, outside of Atlantic City.  We shouldn't have finished the bottle of wine.  "Do you remember that time in high school when we all went..." she said.  "It's too crowded here," I said.  "I know a beach five minutes away, where no one ever comes," she giggled.  We hopped in her parent's Buick and drove off.  The beach was smooth and deserted.  I left my watch and sandals in the car and hid the keys under the driver's seat.  We crossed the sand, took off our clothes, and swam, floating on our backs and looking at the lights.  When we got out of the water we discovered that the tide had reached our clothes and they were sodden.  It was a little too chilly to put them on, so we rolled them into wet sandy bundles and dashed to the car.  I put on my watch and sandals, and we drove back to her house.  I don't think I've ever driven as fast on the Jersey Turnpike before, or since. 

f) The only thing my dog ever asked me for was a pair of boots and a hat with a feather.  Since she's got only one back leg, it wasn't hard to find her a boot, and I decided that a one-eyed dog deserved a feather, so I went along with the request.  She's a little peculiar, but I didn't give it too much thought until I was bathing one day, and saw my dog running along the road by the shore, barking at a Buick that was driving by.  It was the King, and when he stopped the car my dog shouted, "My mistress, the Marchioness of Calabash, has had her clothing stolen!"  Apparently my dog had done some favors for the King, because he seemed very concerned, and offered me a ride.  He insisted on taking me to Atlantic City, where his tailor was, and have me outfitted with clothing fit for a Marchioness....

g) I was staying with some friends at the shore in Wildwood, New Jersey.  I had made plans to meet a college friend for dinner in Philadelphia.  I lost track of time at the beach and was running late, so I threw a towel onto the seat and jumped into the car in my wet bathing suit and started on my way.  To save time, I decided to change in the car while I was driving.  So I took off my bathing suit and threw it on the floor in the backseat, and grabbed a sun dress from my bag on the passenger seat.  I was trying to get arranged right to slip it over my head when it blew out the window, leaving me driving a car wearing only sandals and a watch.

Comments

[Jill]

d.

[Isaac Laquedem]

b.

[sarni]

e)

[Lisbeth]

b!

[Shara]

d.

[Sherry]

b!

[Amy]

e.

[Nicole]

d-

[David]

B.

I like this partly because you wrote 'take take' which is two takes, when you probably meant to write 'to take'.

b

[Eleanor]

d. somehow the phrase "punchy and dejected" was descriptive enough to make me think it was your style of writing.

[Patrick]

C - the only answer in a multiple choice test

[Dylan]

b

[Anthony Cerminaro]

b.

not a, i dont think you'ld consciously decide to drive naked

not c, see response to 'a', and i dont see you at a "wild party"

d is likely, but improbable; you could eliminate your discomfort by opening the windows

not e, i imagine you'd choose to put wet clothes on instead of driving in the buff

f. ?

not g, doesnt sound like you, and i'd think you'ld put your wet suit on as opposed to the alternative

i choose b. skinny dipping and tonics sound right up your ally

[womanofthelaw]

E.

[mj]

B. No, E.

No, definitely B. B.

[Brian]

B!

[Harry]

I believe B is what actually happened.

[JXF]

B. Only B sounds like Sherry.

[MC]

B

[wab]

Someone has to vote for A. I'll do it

This is an interesting post to come shortly after "Faith." Faith, as you seem to describe it, is kind of like this poll, only with Faith, the choice that gets the most votes wins! "I really want a. to be true -- therefore I'll go around thinking it is!" "I really want to have faith in something -- therefore I do!" Right. You eitheri have faith or you don't. You clearly do not have it. Learn to accept that fact and move on.

[sasi]

(E) is the good gues of mine, you must have lost things to be in that situation.........

[George]

Good site! I'll stay reading! Keep improving!