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Heidi Ho: Part TWO
The Specs of Heidi's '64 Chevy Nova
I don’t know whether to feel stupid or angry. How was I supposed to know that this “catharsis” thing I was writing was going to be read by that awful therapist? So of course that breakout didn’t work, and there’s no chance of getting out early on parole or anything. They confiscated my paper and used it as evidence in trial. And the worst part is that it really did feel good to write all that down, but if I write anything more down, they’ll use it in court also. So as soon as this is done, I’m going to hide it in a place they’ll never have the guts to search: the drawer of a math teacher’s desk! And I’ll even put some math in it to make it look good.
Remember “my” car that had terrible brakes and acceleration and steering? (Although what can you expect? It was a ’64 Chevy Nova.) I did some calculations on expedia.com. (The computers in rehab are pathetic by the way. I miss my cable modem. It takes forever here to download…um…well, anyway). The route I used from Bloomington to Columbus via Nashville was only 38.2 miles, but I ended up going more because that *%#&@$ steering wheel didn’t let me go straight. What with weaving all over the place (forget staying in my lane, try staying on the road,) I suspect I added some 12 miles to my trip. I bet that if you integrated an equation that mapped my velocity against elapsed time since I started, you would find I went closer to 50 miles than 38.2. (How’s that for math talk? Bet that teacher would never suspect I wasn’t one of her own students. I learned the word “integrate” senior year in high school, and never used it since.)
And the acceleration! I started out going 604.3162 miles per hour per hour. That may sound like a lot, but think of it this way: it took me 2 minutes to get up to 20 miles an hour! Forget 0 to 90 in 12.4 seconds. Try 0 to 20 in 124 seconds. And the car couldn’t even handle that much—from the moment it started the acceleration began to decrease, until when I had to start braking for Nashville, the care was barely increasing its speed at about 10 miles per hour per hour. That’s like 0 to 10 in 3600 seconds.
And then don’t forget the bakes! It took me almost 20 minutes (19.7845, to be slightly more exact) to get from 50 to 32 mph, and then of course I had to step on the pathetic gas to run away from that anal cop, and it took the dumb acceleration another 25 minutes to get up to barely past 60 mph, which was enough to outrun the pathetic cop, (but not his radio, which probably had a velocity of about 186,000 miles per second). Granted, I was able to go from 60-ish to zero in only 15 minutes (14.834) after I lost the cop, but that was by the grace of my business associates, not my breaks. These associates sure knew their job of stopping cars and did a good job on mine…actually, I have no idea what they did. Poured molasses on the road or something. Anyhow, they got me stopped, but I doubt that that Chevy will be good for much else. I wonder if that IU kid will ever notice the difference. Probably not.
