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The Tale of the Escaping Roof:

When building her house, Andrea didn’t have a truck. She was driving a hatchback she’s rewired as a mobile power plant. This precluded large lumber runs, which come up when building something out of, say, wood*. So a friend was called, and bamboozled into borrowing his mom’s pickup. Wood was purchased, and, at around seventy miles an hour, sort of leapt out of the truck and onto the freeway. “Noooooooo!” Shouted our Participants. Swerving into the breakdown lane, they gathered some five hundred pounds of building materials scattered over several hundred feet of whizzing traffic, loaded up, and took off, visibly shaking. They also discovered that the tailgate wouldn’t latch correctly, and possibly never had. About thirty seconds later, it happened again. “NOOOOOOO!” Shouted our Participants. Again, wood was reloaded. Except this time, a friendly State Trooper has pulled up behind, and is giving our Participants a Look.

“Er,” Said this Job Applicant.

After a moment of frenzied arm waving and use of The Technique **, Our Participants once again drive off. This time, the wood escapes only partway, making an amazing noise as it’s dragged down the freeway. They’ve traveled a total of fifteen feet. This time, there is no shouting, only slumping, and trying to become very small. Before the somewhat less friendly trouper can make his way over ***, this Job Applicant has raced back, and pointed out that there’s a public works flatbed on the far side of the freeway, and wouldn’t that solve everything, officer? The truck is radioed, but points out that the Job Applicant’s house is too far away, and is there anywhere closer? So an ex-boyfriend with a parking spot and no car is called, and an unassembled roof is dropped neatly into an apartment complex parking lot. The final leg of the journey is completed by a local theatre company’s technical director, who has a truck and a good sense of humor.

* Like a house

** Give them way too much information until they’ve reached some sort of inner switch and tell you to Get The Hell Out Of Here.

*** He had not yet started his car