Pulling this up for my sister because she knows these people…

My parents are both Aquarians. My mother is a double Aquarius and my father is also Aquarius with four planets and his n. node in the sign. That’s a lot of Aquarius!

I wrote this in 2002. HQ wanted this in my book but after much debate, it got cut. It was a story in the middle of a story and while I used to write like this, Saturn came along and forced structure and discipline.

Anyway in this bit, I’m visiting my sister and her husband who I never liked all that much. Consequently, I call him XXXXX in my stories. See? No name for him! (Well, except for Aries Bunny) I’m not even consistent around how many X’s I give him, but anyway one day we were sitting around telling stories and the Blue Streak came up.

“W” is my father and you can see my affinity with courts is inherited…

“The Blue Streak?” XXXXX asked.

“Yeah. You don’t know about the Blue Streak?” I asked.

My sister laughed. “He doesn’t know. That’s W’s truck. You tell him, Elsa. You tell these better than I do.”

“Okay, I will”,” I said. “The Blue Streak was an old military 2-seater truck he had. He got it at an auction and thought he was all cool. It was all rusted out around the windows, just a big ol’ clunky truck with ripped seats and a double cab. I don’t mean space behind the seat. I mean two actual full size seats. Four doors. It was faded Army colored, with rust everywhere inside the cab. Outside too, I guess.”

The stared so I kept talking..

“The truck was an abomination and W was teased at work which he got off on of course. He left it that way until the novelty of the thing started to fade, and this is when he decided to paint it with the leftover house paint.”

“House paint?” XXXXX asked.

“Right. Well, our mother was an artist and she knows paint. So she tells him that you can’t put house-paint on metal, never mind he plans to paint the truck with the paint brush.”

“Is he going to use exterior paint, at least?” he asked.

“No,” I stared. “Interior paint.”

“You mean he’s going to paint the house and then walk outside and paint a truck with it.”

“Yeah. That’s what I mean.” I snorted and my sister laughed because she remembered this. Well, she should, she was there.

“He was going to roll the paint onto the truck with a regular paint roller and then do the detail work with the paint brush, but really the roller didn’t work at all, so he ended up painting the truck with the brush. A muted light tan yellowish house paint color, this is. You could see the brush strokes all over the truck.”

No comments, no questions.

“So my mother comes out. She can see him out there painting from her studio. She tells him that the truck looks like shit. She says it may help if he paints the bumper a different color so he obliges her by taking a can of spray paint and painting them red.”

“So the truck is cream, with red bumpers?” XXXXX asked.

“Right. And he says it looks great. It actually looks like shit and everyone says they won’t ride it in with him, which is fine for him, and fodder for a lot of jokes. You know. He is not going to let us ride in his truck even if we beg. Well two days later the paint starts flaking off. The house paint this is. The red spray paint stays. My mother says “I told you so,” and W gets pissed. He tries to act like it’s going to work out but a week later the paint is almost all chipped off from the sun and this becomes a problem that cannot be ignored, and never mind that. The guys he works with are all waiting for the next stunt anyway. And he said his truck has dandruff by the way. All that flaking and stuff. He called it dandruff and I thought that was pretty funny.”

They chuckled.

“So W comes home on Friday night with three or five cans of blue spray paint. He knows this works, right? Spray paint works. He says he’s going to paint the truck again and this time he’s going to do it right.”

They were grinning.

“So he spray paints the truck blue and my mother comes back out. She tells him the truck still looks like shit with the red bumpers. “What’s the matter with you?” she says. “See where your wife gets that, ” I said regarding my sister. “That’s what people ask him, and that’s what people ask me. What’s the matter with you? People ask me that all the time and when they do, that’s when I know I am really me for sure.” I stopped to smile manically.

“Anyway the truck does look like shit. My father agrees with her sort of but he tells her he’s only half done and suggests she wait until he is done, before she criticizes. They have been married 20 years by the way. He finishes painting the truck blue, surveys and then puts a new coat of red on the bumpers. When he’s done he names the truck “The Blue Streak”. Do you want to know why?”

“Why?”

“Because you can’t drive this truck over 45 mph. That’s what the truck said. I’m not sure. Maybe this was a gas crisis thing but it had military stickers that stated this. “Do not drive over 45 mph,” which believe me…”

“Believe you what?”

“Well he argued this in court! He was stopped for going too slow on the freeway once and he went to court to fight the ticket. He told the judge that although he was aware of the minimum speed on the highway, he feared what may happen to his truck if he broke the rule so that is why he was going 43 mph and holding up traffic.”

I stopped to take a drink.

“Did he get away with that?” XXXXX asked. “Did the judge let him off?”

“Yeah. Of course.”