Ticking Time Bombs

Tonight, I got in my car to make an impromptu trip to WalMart before it closed. If you'd like, you can imagine I was heading somewhere much more exciting and fashionable, but really, I was going to WalMart. As I opened the driver's side door, I noticed something small and dark on the passenger seat. "Is that a slug??" I thought. Gross. But as I looked closer, I could see that it wasn't a slug: it was GLASS. That's right, a shard of brown glass. From a beer bottle.

I'd noticed yesterday that there was a bottle of Bud Light on the floor of my car. It had to have rolled out of a half-empty case we were transporting the evening prior, and being in a hurry to get somewhere exciting and fashionable yesterday, I just left it there. Apparently that was a truly terrible idea, because it would seem that sometime during the day today, it exploded. Into many, many shards of beer bottle. And as you can imagine, everything in my car is a little bit sticky now. I almost wish it had been a slug.

Unfortunately, this isn't my first experience with beverages blowing up in hot cars. I recall one summer in college, when I lived alone. Diet Cokes were on sale 5/$12, so naturally I'd loaded up my shopping cart with five 12-packs. But once I got back to the apartment, I couldn't transport five 12-packs of soda up three flights of stairs. Not in one trip, at least, and I have a pig-headed tendency to refuse to make more than one trip, ever. So two cases made it upstairs with the groceries. Later, the next time I came back from somewhere, two more made their way into the apartment. But one lonely 12-pack remained in the backseat.

The following day, I was driving somewhere on a back road. Over the sounds of the radio, I heard a sudden POP, followed by a sizzling kind of sound. Instantly I thought my car had exploded. Once I assured myself that it hadn't, I thought to follow the sound of the sizzling to the backseat, where multiple Diet Cokes inside the case have bloated and exploded. They were leaking and spurting soda everywhere. Fortunately there was a gas station up ahead, so I pulled into the lot and wrestled the offending object out of my car. Most of the cans inside had hulked out such that the cardboard was ripped and mangled in places, and I could tell that the precious Diet Coke was beyond saving. Also, it was still dripping all over me. The only trash can in sight was one of those small ones with an ash tray top and a small space below for trash, so cramming the case inside was a bit of a challenge. But I laugh in the face of challenges, and thus succeeded. Finally, the rogue Diet Cokes were put to rest for good.

The moral of these stories? Dogs and babies aren't the only things you shouldn't leave in hot cars. Think of the beverages.