What Were You Thinking

LaSonya Burns

English 111-83DT

April 30, 2015

Memoir

What Were You Thinking

        I had traveled this long, winding, and desolate road many times on my way home from work or previous auction adventures.  This time was the only time I realized just how close the fire department really was to my house.  I was following my sister in this beat-up blue piece of junk car we had just purchased from the local auction.  My sister, Barbara, a little midget of a woman, who you could barely see over the steering wheel was driving along as fast as she could go, as usual.  Then all of a sudden, her car began reducing speed.  The car was moving at a pace of almost being pushed by someone and not the engine. “Wait,” I said to myself. “She is not hitting her breaks. What on earth is she doing?” I reached in between the seats where I kept a big black bag with multiple zippers. It was my car phone. Not a cell phone but an actual phone in a bag. I picked up the receiver which was almost as big as the one on my phone at home and proceeded to dial the car phone that she had in her car.

        “Hello?” I said to her.

        “What, Sony,” she replied irritated.

        “What on earth are you doing? One minute you are Speeding Gonzales, and the next you are driving almost in reverse.”

        “This stupid car,” said the midget. “I’m pulling over.”

        So, pulling over behind her, I noticed that there was smoke coming from under the hood. She jumped out of this already low-to-the-ground car and waddled to the front where she proceeded to open the hood. After opening the hood, she jumped backwards, flailing to the ground as the blaze came from under the hood. As I saw her flailing around like a fish out of water I opened my door and put my left foot on the brick-hard, red-clay dirt on the shoulder of the road. As I stood up, I saw, “The Fire.”

        “FIRE! FIRE!” I yelled stupidly, like there was someone on this desolate road to her me, the skinny lady with the beach ball under her shirt. As I waddled almost backwards up alongside the car to help my sister get up from the ground, I noticed the fire was dripping down onto the ground and catching the grass on fire. My midget of a sister got up off the ground and did the most idiotic thing I had ever seen someone do in all my life. She lifted the hood, again, barley tall enough to stick her head under, and she started to BLOW…..

        “SWWWWW, SWWWWW, SWWWWW!” breathing hysterically. At that very moment I knew that my sister should be on the cartoon show “Inch High, Private High.” On this cartoon, him being only an inch high, he did wild and outrageous things and that was just what my sister managed to do. As I watched her do this unthinkable act, it was almost like watching her in slow motion. I ran, yes ran back to the car that I was driving and got in. I knew that the baby in my stomach was about sick because I had never run that fast in the entire eight-and-a-half months that I had been pregnant. I started the car, put it in gear, and sped down the highway to the fire department which was a little over a mile away. When I got there, the paramedics thought I was going into labor or something because they kept trying to get me into the ambulance. I told them about three or four times that I was fine and it was my sister that needed help, literally.