LEFT by Thomas Lipschultz 2/23/97 (Canyonerra reference attributed to The Simpsons) "My name is Earl Grey, and for the record, I do NOT like tea." "Uhhh... OK... well, thank you for calling the Peer Pressure Hotline, where you WILL learn to be confident or we'll all drive over to your house and beat you up. How may I help you, Mr. Grey?" "Well, I'd like to tell you a story." "Ummm... OK..." "It's to help you with future callers." Silence. The woman on the other end was quiet. Taking that as his cue, Earl started to recite his magical tale: I was driving through the desert one day in my brand spankin' new Canyonerra (smells like a steak and seats 35!) when I noticed an abandoned 1894 Buick. I found this rather unusual, as I'm sure you would too, but I knew it was from 1894 by the tail pipes. Yesiree, you can always tell how old a car is by its tail pipes. Anyhoo, it had its left turn signal on. But there was NOBODY IN IT. I found this kinda odd, but seeing how its from 1894 and all, I figured nobody'd wanna drive it so they abandoned it in fear of their own lives. Made sense. As I drove along, I got to this ghost town further into the desert. Not a soul in sight, but lots of cars from lots of years. I saw a 2874 Hyundai ong and even a 4009 B.C. Toyota Rock. THAT'S the extent of ages of automobiles in that town. And they all had their left turn signals on (well, except for the really old cars, which had fiberglass hands protruding from their left windows with pointer fingers outstretched). Anyhoo, I then got to the end of the road. What I thought was a four-way stoplight turned out to be a T in the road, so I had to decide which way to turn. So naturally, I did what any self-respecting human being would -- I turned right. I later got ahold of a map of the area and found out that, had I turned left back there, I would've probably stumbled upon a tribe of headhunters with techno-bazookas and slingshots. So, because I had the good sense to turn right and ignore my peers, who were all suggesting that I turn left, I instead stumbled upon Tutankhaman's Private Reserve and made off with several billion dollars. Earl stopped. "Hello? Hello?" There was no answer on the other side. The hotline had hung up on him. It was then that he felt the straightjacket.