God Wanted Me to Have a Wine Bar or How I Came to Understand Those Ridiculous Fact Patterns From My Torts Class

Embarrassingly enough, I wanted a hip wine rack. I can't explain why, but I'm pretty sure that it has something to do with the fact that I believe chicks dig them. Again, I'm not sure if that's true, or even why I believe it, but I do. As it turns out, I actually wanted a hip "wine bar". I didn't know the difference or that "wine bars" existed, and it occurred to me that this exact lack of knowledge should inform me that the "wine bar" was probably not a necessary purchase. Fortunately, I am aware that I give bad advice and decide to ignore myself. It was as though some Higher Power wanted me to have a wine bar, though I knew it not. Quick, to the internets.

I begin surfing the web and discovered several nice options at several stores. I also happened to be furniture shopping and so began to look in furniture stores, as well... However, I soon discovered that furniture stores are places of nearly limitless magical power to take ordinary stuff you should be able to find at the Wal-Mart and make them astronomically expensive. I found a great wine bar / liquor cabinet for like 800 bucks. Sorry furniture folks... I was born at night, but not last night.

Briefly, I consider making a wine bar. I then remember that I didn't even know what one was until a few days ago, that I had managed to seriously injure myself by simply opening boxes, and that, even though I own a laser guided circular saw, that sort of last resort may be best saved for a post-apocalyptic setting. I think better of the idea. Then I discover World Market.

World Market, for those of you without one, is a mildly overpriced quasi-grocery, pseudo-furniture store that sells "rare" and "exotic" merchandise like fancy chocolates or salt that you put in a bath and not on food... Anyway, World Market had a very nice selection of wine bars, so I go to the only one I know to see them. I like one of them immediately (and it happens to be the second cheapest) so I say "I'll take it".

Unfortunately, Susan, a delightfully knowledgeable and friendly lady who abhors traffic, lives in D.C. (yet has trouble with wild deer... something about the Rock Creek Park) and commutes to Bailey's Crossroads for work, says they don't have any. Drats. Operation Wine Bar is off. She offers to check the other World Markets nearby... "Eh? Other World Markets?" Awesome... wine bar mission back on.

Turns out that they have one of the wine bars at the Tyson's Corner location. I hate Tyson's Corner... it's the definition of pretentious urban sprawl, made iconic by its Volvo dealerships, Tiffany's Jewelry Store, and an unholy mall. Being that I was already at the alter of consumerism, I made an exception and went right over.

It is very important to note, ladies and gentlemen, that I drive a Honda Civic. This is a good car, but a small Japanese car... Well, maybe not by Asian standards, but for SUV loving, wine bar toting, red-blooded Americans I am in a near perpetual state of being 1/3 the size of everything else on the road. I take the parameters of the interior space and/or trunk space into consideration and, after math fueled by optimism and giddiness, decide I'm totally fine.

Friends, I was not totally fine. I was not "cool", I was not "good to go", I was not even "ok, because at least you're not stuck with this thing". I had purchased the wine bar (and 30 bottles of wine to fill it) and signed the receipt before I was shown the box.

The box is huge. Large... Very large... So much so that I use my own body to "measure" it to see if it'll fit. It is roughly 3/4 as tall as I am, exactly as wide and about 2 1/2 times as deep. No big deal, I think... it'll be cool... I fit in my car with room to spare. What I wasn't counting on was the fact that I bend considerably when I enter my car and wood, while it may be prettier than I, does not. Also, I think this thing and I would be in the same weight class if we were to fight... and it almost came to that.

It is at this point that I really started rethinking the purchase of a two door civic. The seats were the problem really. I couldn't get the thing in around the seats and the seat belts... Next I try the trunk... No good. The box is simply too large to fit in the opening.

Eureka! The BOX is too big, but maybe not the actual wine thingy... I walk back into the store and ask for a box cutter. It was actually pretty easy for me to find someone to ask, as all of the members of the staff had come to the front to watch the idiot, clearly first time wine bar buyer, try and fit a very large square peg into a car door shaped, small hole. By this time, several customers had come by and were extremely amused, offering such pearls of wisdom as "I don't think that'll fit" and "I see you're having trouble" and the occasional snicker. One nice guy offered to help, but I doubted he could alter the physical properties of my car or the wine bar in a manner acceptable to me, so I politely declined. Seriously, I should have sold tickets.

Anyway, I get the thing out of the box and realize that it is still very heavy and that the glass is now exposed, so extreme caution is due. Again, the wine bar that I had to have for whatever reason is too large to fit into the back seat. It's too stubborn to fold its legs and sit nicely in the front seat like a considerate passenger and it only sort of fits in the trunk. I was about to give up when I remembered that the seats fold flat...

It's just that I didn't know how they folded flat. I'd never had to resort to seat folding before. It took me ten minutes to figure out how to get them down, but I did it (turns out, the release lever is in the trunk... helpful tidbit from your friendly neighborhood Staffman to all you Honda owners). Next I loaded the wine bar into the trunk, top first... She looked like she was just going to make it. Miracle of miracles, it was going to... no. It would not work. It got exactly halfway into the trunk and then the top was too big to fit through the opening.

Now is the time in my story, friends and family, loyal readers, and casual visitors into my life, when I do something profoundly stupid. Half out of desperation, half out of exasperation, and not unlike Keanu Reeves ponderous statement "We're gonna jump the tracks" in Speed when he's driving the subway train, I decide that I'm going for it. The wine bar is lodged pretty good into my trunk... It's out of the box, so I can't leave it there, and I have spent too much energy, too much sweat, and too many brain cells coming so far. I was going for it... I was going to navigate Northern Virginia and Washington D.C. traffic with something that weighed about 150 lbs. perched out of the back of my car and the trunk lid open. No rope, no bungees... nothing but a blanket to keep it from scratching my trunk deck, a piece of styrofoam to protect the glass from the trunk and a prayer. Oh yeah, and there are literally 30 bottles of wine in various stages of ridiculosity rolling / sitting around.

Often I wondered, sitting in torts class, how people got into situations like this. Where, say, something so obviously and inevitably stupid is going to happen that there is no way to believe that the person was unaware of the chances for failure, yet they do it anyway. Think something along the lines of the elderly lady who sets her RV "cruise control" at 70 mph and then goes into the back to make a sandwich, or the guy who decides welding without a face mask is a good idea... I now know the answer: because, despite hubris and ignorance, sometimes, it works.

I ended up on the G.W. Parkway with this thing, which normally has a speed limit of 50. For the first time in my life I was thankful to see bumper to bumper traffic... I managed no more than 10 mph for most of my experience in Northern Virginia, cringing at every bump, trying desperately to stay in front of crappy cars... All I needed was for some jackass in a BMW to get a headlight cracked from my wine bar being shattered on the parkway...

I even made it on 395 and across all four lanes of traffic into D.C. for as long as I needed to... I made it down 14th St. and all the way to my apartment. I didn't get pulled over, even though I rode beside police officers. I didn't lose the wine bar, even though the streets in D.C. are not far from what I imagine the streets in Somalia must be like. No glass broke, no car damage, no wine bar damage that I could see. I even dropped the behemoth once as I was trying to get it into my apartment... no damage at all. My wine bar, I now believe, was the recipient of divine intervention... there is no other way to explain it. What?... Jesus drank wine....