Volume IV: NO, SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE??

In 1995, one year after I’d moved to California, my two best friends from college, Sung and Cristina, came out to visit. I was working at Ann Taylor at the time, trying to make ends meet while looking for a “real” job. A day or two after Sung and Cristina arrived (and admittedly, after a night of drunken debauchery) I was at work waiting to be picked up for lunch. Outside the store, a car came peeling around the corner and screeching to a halt. Sung jumped out of the front seat, ran through the door and, yelled at me to get in the damn car. Quickly

I have to admit that for a fleeting second, the crazed look on his face and the idling rental car at the curb made me wonder if my two best friends had just done the unthinkable and robbed a bank. But I went with it, grabbed my bag, and got in the back seat.

“What the hell is wrong with you guys?” I asked, slightly annoyed.

And then, Sung and Cristina lost it. They cracked. They howled with laughter, unable to talk, pointing wildly in front of them. Pointing, it would seem, at a blob of brown matter that was smeared on the passenger’s side of the windshield.

“What the…? What is that? WHAT THE HELL IS THAT??”

“That,” said Sung, “is shit.”

An hour earlier, Sung and Cristina had dragged themselves out of bed and headed down to their rental car, which we’d parked the night before in one of the unreserved spaces in my building’s parking lot. It was not until they got closer to the car that they noticed something peculiar hanging from the tree branches above the car. It appeared to be white paper. White toilet paper?

Hmm. That’s strange.

Then something else caught their attention. They cocked their heads to one side. They squinted their eyes and leaned forward.

They looked at the windshield;

they looked up at the tree;

they looked back at the windshield;

they looked at each other.

Yes. As God is my witness, it's true. Someone had, quite literally, defecated on the windshield of their white Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.

“We cannot go to LOZANO’S, Cristina,” I yelled, appalled that she'd even consider going to the car wash around the corner from my place. “Dude, I live here. I go to Lozano’s all the time. THEY KNOW ME. We can’t get the car cleaned THERE!! Sung, TELL HER!” I pleaded.

Sung howled with laughter.

“Liz, I have (emphasis) shit all over my rental car. I don’t know who or what did it and why. But that’s sick. Sick! And I am NOT going to drive around Palo Freakin’ Alto with THAT (pointing at the windshield) all over my car. YOU GOT IT?? Now tell me how to get to the nearest goddamn car wash! Sung, TELL HER!!”

Sung couldn’t talk. Tears streamed down his face...

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Later that evening, long after we’d found a car wash where (Thank GOD) no one knew me, Sung, Cristina and I pondered the day's events. Who would do such a thing? What could we possibly have done to provoke such a bizarre and uncivilized attack? We dismissed the notion that the culprit had been a dog or a wild animal (last time we checked, animals don’t squeeze the Charmin), and we massaged the theory that it had been a disgruntled apartment building tenant whose parking spot we’d inadvertently taken. Unfortunately, my friends, this story does not end with a satisfactory answer. Because the truth is, we never did find the culprit. The only thing we were able to ascertain for absolute certain is that, albeit completely unintentionally, we chose the wrong guy to piss off.

P.S. - for the rest of the trip, the white Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme slept peacefully on the street - vulnerable to thieves, but safe from disgusting, defecating lower life forms.