skit #61: merrily skipping beats

1954: Four women sing doo-wop doo-wah into a condenser microphone. Their record becomes immensely popular, its songs mostly dealing the sorrow of loss.

1960: His four chambers form as atria and ventricles. His capillaries indiscriminately rout out all his extremities, the mundane toes and exotic testicles alike. His heart beats inside his mother's womb, pumping her borrowed blood into her son. A baby boy gestates. He will later change his recognized name to Hunter. Upon delivery, the pediatrician notes no congenital defects and report it is a heart like any other heart.

1968: It repeats a four verse mantra: intake, compression, power, exhaust. Suspended by a hydraulic lift, the car does not move. Gasoline makes the engine snarl horrible things, which seems to please two men from Engine Assembly. They tick off the standardized quality assurance criteria one-by-one, torque the V8 to the chassis, and approve the Chevrolet Chevelle 396-SS for consumer purchase.

1979: Hunter careens down the interstate in his Chevy. He bought it second-hand. The previous owner's abuse drove it from showpiece to jalopy in a mere eleven years. Hunter cares only that it has a radio, that it is red, and that it is fast.

The engine backfires and expels infernal incantations, grawachukka grawachukka. Hunter never acknowledges the officious red oil lamp who glows earnestly with all the other pedantic indicators of the dashboard. The 1986 Chevrolet Chevelle 396-SS Service Manual clearly suggests to "verify motor oil level and color are within factory recommended limits." Hunter snickers at the phrase "wipe the dipstick," reads nothing else, and closes the manual.

Hunter drives having never earned a license, intuitively and illegally. He's not one for learning. Hunter doesn't know any theories; He is not a theoretical man, or even a theoretical boy. He lives. His nineteen-year-old heart runs on the thin fuel of rotgut and cigarettes, merrily skipping beats. He has never noticed any indicator lights on his person, but he if he did, he would ignore them too.

The engine stalls at a red light. He suddenly realizes if the engine seized, he would need a replacement junker in which to barge about town. Stowed in the glovebox remains the Service Manual, its unread contents describing the predicted lifecycle of his failing Chevelle. The engine restarts apathetically. Hunter is relieved.

It's six o'clock, night or afternoon, and he is soused. He gets some fuel and his new girl named Trixy. His Chevy floats down the boulevard with enough gas to drive all day. The women living in his radio sing doo-wop doo-wah.