Incident report: 24 March 2010

7:29 am

“Oh!” shouted the delegate from Romania, as we waited for the rest of the carpool to arrive. “That is a good way to discharge the battery!” He is looking intently at a red ballpoint pen. He holds it up to us (PRL and Libya), then puts it down into the console between the two front seats of the Buick, and wiggles it around. Sparks start to fly in the console, and it becomes apparent that he has put the pen in the cigarette lighter.

“The metal on the pen, it makes a short cut!” he declares, the miniature fireworks display continuing. “I did not know that it could do that!” To our great relief, he takes the pen out of the electrical outlet, and starts rummaging around in the console, “I wonder where it is the little plastic cover for this?”

As he searches, the remaining carpool members arrive. “Aha!” he shouts, “Now the car it will not catch on fire!” The delegate from Vietnam, climbing into the back seat, is taken by surprise. “Whahappen?”

Victory against pen-initiated car fires being complete, the Romanian delegate feels no need to dwell on the incident by elaborating, leaving the delegate from Vietnam to spend the car ride in a deeper state of befuddlement than usual.