When I was little we owned a VW Rabbit, it was a GTO 5 speed, silver, and It had some minor problems, the hatch never closed right, the back seat was filled with cigarette burns from the hot ashes that would fly into the car when my mom would ash out of her window, and there was the little thing about leaving the turn signal on so the car wouldn’t stall.

One day my mom took me and my two brothers and a friend each in the rabbit to Farmer Jims, a now defunct public swimming hole. In case you didn’t noticed, there were allot of kids in that car. 2 brothers a friend each, and my mom driving, that’s like seven people in a VW rabbit, but trust me, it all works out when you just put some of the kids on the floor. The trip there was packed with cars turning on and off their turn signals in front of us, as if we didn’t know they were on, but the interesting part of this trip didn’t happen till we were headed home.

On the way back from swimming my mom stopped at a convenience store, she picked up some groceries, and packed them up in the hatch back that never closed just right, and off we went. We drove for quite awhile, breathing in the second hand smoke coming off the permanently imbedded chimney in my mom’s mouth. But with six kids coughing and gagging, she eventually got the hint and threw the cigarette out the window.

Not longer after that a car came flying past us, it got in front of her and slowed down, they then started turning on and off their turn signals. This was something we were used to by now, but these guys were quite adamant. We were of course driving with our turn signal on, and my mom yelled that she knew it was on, and tried to explained in her own words that it kept the car running, but the car in front of us didn’t take my moms word for it, or they just didn’t hear the various obscenities pouring out of her previously chimney imbedded mouth, either way they were speeding up and slowing down, turning their signals on and off. The whole time or course my mom is screaming “I know my damn signals on!”. Then all of a sudden, as quickly as they appeared, they sped off and vanished over the hill, apparently giving up their futile effort.

It was just about that time I sniffed the air and looked at my friend, we both kind looked at each other and said what smells good? Then everyone in the car started sniffing the air, it, it smells like, it smells like roasted marsh mellows, yah, that’s it, roasted marshmallows, I got a round of ah yah’s, and that’s its, everyone was saying mmmm that smells good, and a couple said I could go for roasted marshmallows. Out of nowhere my mom piped up, hey that does sound good! Would you believe I just bought some marsh mellows at the store? How weird is that?

She was in the middle of discussing the coincidental purchase when she slammed on the breaks, as we were screeching to a stop she saw the car that we had been following was stopped on the side of the road, its two occupants were now standing in the middle of it, she barely noticed the sign one of them was holding up before she did the instinctive putting your right hand across the passenger’s side to keep the kid from going through the windshield move, all moms knew it. Almost the instant she stopped the car, it started to fill with smoke, I could just barely make out the sign they were holding, written in big block printed words, spelled out on a large piece of card board in what appeared to be bright red lipstick?, said the words, YOUR CAR IS ON FIRE!