Editor’s note: Apologies for any lapses in redaction excellence. Our standards and practices censors are overworked. Human resources is looking into it as we speak.
Author’s disclaimer: All names and likenesses assigned to figures in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, including former professional wrestlers on whom my editor is totally crushing, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Dear the person who stole my car, whom I will henceforth refer to as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson,
Fuck you, you horse’s ass.
That 2003 Honda Pilot is my dude. I’m gonna be real, Dwayne. You’re clearly in a less-than-optimal financial situation — hence the car-stealing — and yet here I am, writing a big old “up yours” letter to you. When it comes to sympathy, I’m having trouble drumming up much. Like, I don’t know what unit scientists use to measure sympathy, but I’ve got about three of those units. Unless that’s a moderate to large amount of sympathy, in which case I have significantly less.
Besides the fact that you stole my motherflipping car and then presumably used it in a crime before abandoning it to die like a neglected Soviet dog, I have some other bones to pick.
For example: Why the [redacted] did you steal my CDs and softball glove, but left the stuff you could’ve sold for actual money? My Remember the Titans soundtrack? Really? I know you haven’t seen that movie because nobody who steals cars in Point Grey would appreciate the story of a newly-integrated high school football team in 1960s Virginia.
Also [redacted] you for stealing the mixtape my now-married friend made me as a belated 16th birthday present. Also [redacted] you for taking London Calling, the pinnacle of 1979’s musical output. And again, seriously, [redacted] you for stealing my softball glove — my first word was “Edgar Martinez,” you Blue Jays-bandwagoning piece of [redacted].
If you aren’t currently employed, I hope you find a job someday. I do, truly. This is 90 per cent so you’ll stop stealing people’s cars, two per cent because I’m bad at holding grudges and eight per cent so that one day you run into a work acquaintance in public and are forced into having torturous half-hour small talk with them. I hope they let slip that your branch is downsizing, leaving you to toil in agony for months over possibly losing your mid-level office position. Then when the layoffs hit, I hope you’re saved but one of the victims is your only friend at work, Steve, who gets hired at a better company where he realizes he never liked you anyway. Wouldn’t that be awful, Dwayne? Kind of like waking up at 6 a.m. to discover your one constant buddy since you were nine was stolen by some hack-ass pitiful loser and not knowing if you’re ever gonna see them again.
That car has 260,000 miles on it and [redacted] you if you think I won’t get another 100K on the odometer. Do you know how many times that thing and I were on Interstates 90 and 82 going between Woodinville and Whitman, Walla Walla, Washington? That’s a lot of Ws in the destination, you sick [redacted].
Wanna know how many thousands of miles was put on that thing going between Vancouver and Seattle and Portland and Seattle and Portland and Seattle and Portland and Seattle and Vancouver again? Too bad, I don’t know either. I hope that unanswered mystery is positively torturous.
You [redacted] mother of [redacted], my job had that car and I chauffeuring Denise Richards, Linda “I didn’t shoot J.R.” Gray and the dude from Vampire Diaries who your little cousin has a crush on. And you know what? I think they found the masking tape on the broken passenger door handle absolutely charming, goddammit. Linda’s a goddess. Do you know how much wisdom she passed on to me from that passenger seat? Too bad. There’s no unit to quantify wisdom, but you could probably use a fat dose of it.
Hey Dwayne, remember that dog you grew up with? No? I do. It’s easy to remember that dog because the AC in my car you stole — you remember my car you stole, right? — was broken 10 years ago when some over-zealous braking sent all 120 pounds of him crashing into the fan. He was fine, but that AC unit hasn’t worked since. Plus there’s still slobber on the ceiling.
More importantly, to the people who helped me get my gnarly, paint-chipped, ambiguously-colored, broken-backseat-AC engine buddy back:
Thanks. You know who you are.