My Beef With Click and Clack, or, The Funniest Poem You Never Heard on Car Talk
The following was posted on my now abandonded blog, Teachers’ Lounge, on June 13, 2010.
A long time ago, in a faraway land called Alabama, Jeffrey Field submitted a poem to Tom and Ray at Car Talk. It had previously been published in an early edition of Miata Magazine (he’s not sure of the edition — spring/summer/fall/winter?, but it must have been in 1991 or 1992 — the poem was featured alongside another poem written by James Dickey. Far as Field can remember, Dickey’s poem had absolutely nothing to do with automobiles, let alone the Miata. However, Field was all puffed up that his poem appeared in the same issue as Dickey’s.)
UPDATE — I’ve started a group on Facebook titled Ignominy, Thy Name is @CarTalk, as well as a “cause” titled Stop the degradation! Support this poem! Please join my group and support my cause so I can put the past where it belongs, in the past. I need to forgive and forget. I need to move on. I need to soothe my bruised and battered ego. I need a new Miata!
UPDATE — I suppose I should have been upfront about this earlier (although I did inform Car Talk producer Doug Berman) — the 1991 Miata stayed in my ex-wife’s hands following our amicable divorce in 2001, despite my desperate plea to buy it from her. On October 25, 2009, at approximately 2:40 p.m., I received a horrifying email — my beloved car, the heart and soul of the poem you are about to read, was in a car wreck and, although my ex-wife walked away unhurt, the car was demolished. Now, here’s where things gets curious… the other driver, who admitted he was at fault, is an FBI agent. And, he told my ex-wife after the accident, “Don’t worry, we’ll take good care of you.”
There’s something fishy going on here, and I think Tom and Ray are somehow connected. (Remember, the flutter of a bat’s wings on the other side of the globe could cause your toilet to run.) I find it queer that the object of my affection was destroyed by an FBI agent.
UPDATE — I’m not surprised, really. I mean, here we have the FBI demolishing MY MIATA, and, at the same time, almost, they arrest Bradley Manning just because he leaked a video showing the murder of innocent civilians. Or, could be they were actually lizards, ya know? I mean the civilians. I pay attention to David Icke cause he’s uncovered a lot of under-the-table dealings with the lizard people. I’m guessing that Doug Berman is one of them lizards. Tom and Ray too, maybe. Come to think of it, Obama might well be a lizard… you think I’m kidding!? Look! Anyways… I’m still waiting for Dougie to send me a love note. I’ll keep y’all updated as events unfold. Right now I’m gonna smoke me a cigarette and then go kill me some lizards.
Tom and Ray totally ignored Field’s submission, thus inflicting needless mental pain on his enormous ego.
Now that our 2002 Saturn was demolished in a car wreck last Wednesday, Field believes it’s time for Tom and Ray to make amends. He asks of them two things.
1. Read the poem on Car Talk
2. Compensate Field with a 2010 Miata and an appearance on their radio show
As Mr. Lee so eloquently spoke, Tom, Ray, it’s time for you guys to “do the right thing” (or I may have to hurt myself again).
And now, the poem which Car Talk refuses to air.
On Teaching Your Wife to Drive Her New Miata, or, What is This Clutch Thing Anyway?
To shift, or not to shift? That is the question-
Whether ’tis nobler to brave the
Five-gated synchromesh monster
With its yet untamed demon clutch
And risk the gnashing of teeth in my mad hunt for third,
Or to drive the distance in second gear,
And, by revving past the blessed redline,
Crack a piston or burn a valve.
’Tis better to shift, methinks,
For who shall love me perchance I blow this
DOHC-16V in-line, 4-cylinder fuel-injected engine?
Aye! There’s the rub.
For who shall love a shiftless woman
As myself? Yet, is love secured by clutching?
Perhaps ’tis better to seek a neutral ground and
Coast to gentle stop.
No! The risk is not the worth,
For the master would only make his gurgling sounds and Force me start again, and thereby tempt the dreaded stall,
Wherein he would surely stable me and
Ride the pleasured pony himself.
Fie! Fie on him! I shall stall no more. Wherefore did he buy this silver ragtop? Aye, for me, and with half my money! I’ll play his dicey little game and yet still may win.
Lo! Win I must!
For with the stall dies respect,
And in that death-like sleep
What dreams may unbidden come?
Grinning motorists in their idiot-proof cars,
Shiftless men in lobster suits who dare stop behind me
on the slightest upgrade.
Ha! I am better than those powerglide simpletons. I guide my own destiny.
Switch the pitch, smell the glove,
Break like the wind,
Leaving strips of Yokahama rubber all over the road,
Proof I stall no more.
I shift when I take the mood.
And if I chance the stall,
So be it.
I am woman.
Who but she can bear the whips and scorns of time
With but a bare bodkin twixt her teeth?
Sisters, oh sisters!
Join with me and together we shall
Bare our broccoli at those leering men
In their over-sized Chevrolets.
But,
Ho! Lo! I ramble.
Soft you now, girlie,
Do the right thing.
“PUT THE CLUTCH IN!”
Oh! Oh! Oh! Yes indeedy I shall. You needn’t yell, master.
Your native hue looks far better
Than this tinge you show me now.
I pray you sir, tis done. The clutch is in.
Shall we go a happy motoring?