| There's this guy who lives across the street from us | | | | one should be able to drive a VW, but he does |
| who we have renamed Wet Lips. When we are in a | | | | anyway. My wife knows when he is coming long |
| really lighthearted mood, we refer to him as Puffy | | | | before he turns off the main road and onto our |
| Wet Lips. This gomer is in his late 60's to early 70' | | | | street. Then he cuts the wheels suddenly to the left |
| and has a body like Mr. McGoo and lips like Angelina | | | | in directly front of our window and doesn't so much |
| Jolie's. I mean they are two huge puffy red and | | | | drive into the parking space as flies into it as though |
| unnatural things that look like a pair of slugs. I keep | | | | shot out of a rocket launcher. Then, he backs up. |
| waiting for them to take off in a race around his little | | | | Then he goes forward. Then he backs up. Then he |
| head at any moment. Actually, he looks more like | | | | goes forward. Then he backs up. Then he goes |
| that toady little man with the horned-rimmed glasses | | | | forward. He does this exactly five times. And, each |
| and freaky, scratchy voice who used to be on | | | | time he backs up, he comes within inches of our |
| LateNight with David Letterman and whose name I | | | | bedroom window and fills our house with carbon |
| can never remember. Anyway, Wet Lips drives this | | | | monoxide. Once he is Obsessively- Compulsively |
| ancient VW Bug on which he has to rebuild the | | | | satisfied that the car is snugly into his slot, then he |
| engine each Saturday. I think it had to be one of the | | | | hammers down on the accelerator while foraging |
| very first Volkswagens Bugs every built. Somehow, | | | | about for one of those red-barred things that lock |
| he got it into Mexico after taking it from Hitler right | | | | the steering wheel up so no one will steal his machine |
| after the war or something like that. Wet Lips keeps | | | | of asphyxiating death. (As if someone would want his |
| running this "car" when he should show some | | | | bomb that belches foul-smelling blue smoke!) All the |
| humanitarian kindness and have it put down. Wet Lips | | | | while, Larry Lead-Foot is hammered down on the gas |
| drives this car endlessly, relentlessly, and stupidly. We | | | | pedal and we, well, we start walking all wobbly, start |
| live on the end of a dead-end street and "Puffy," as | | | | falling down a lot, and begin seeing things that are |
| we are wont to call him, comes in and out of his little | | | | not there. I have got to suppress the urge to go |
| cochera (carport) dozens upon dozens of times a | | | | outside, drag him from his car, and hold his mouth |
| day. The man is a maniac. No one has to use a car | | | | over the exhaust pipe and screech like a madman, |
| that often anywhere or for anything that many | | | | "How's that tasting for you, Puffy?" I truly do not |
| times a day. But, he evidently has many places to go | | | | get what possessed Mexicans in this town to get |
| and many people to see each day. When he makes | | | | cars in such environmental-destroying abundance. |
| his frequent trips, we always know it because he | | | | Those who have cars, and sometimes more than |
| parks the Blue Beetle right in front of our bedroom | | | | one, are beginning to have the same obesity |
| window. Here is how the man parks his car. His little | | | | problems that Americans, Canadians and now many |
| carport is exactly three meters in front of our | | | | Europeans are suffering. They will get into a car to |
| bedroom window. We know this distance for a fact | | | | drive two hundred yards all in the name of "Car |
| because one time, last summer, someone tried to | | | | Ownership Convenience" when they could walk! So |
| blow up a taxi across from our window by setting it | | | | badly is car ownership coveted that the payoff for |
| on fire and that's what motivated us to take | | | | having a car far outweighs affording their kids clean |
| scientific measurements. The flaming taxi was right | | | | air and a healthier body by walking rather than |
| next to Wet Lips' car. Nothing happened to the VW | | | | motoring. That is a mystery to me! |
| (unfortunately) but the cab was toast. So, here | | | | Doug Bower is the author of "A Walk Through |
| comes Wet Lips tearing up the street at speeds no | | | | Mexico's Crown Jewel: A Guanajuato Travelogue. |