1.4. Baby You Can Drive My Car.

I'm slowly becoming my own worst enemy.

The decisions I'm making in Balki's presence continue to put me in deeper and more dangerous jams. I'm sorry to report that the events of this week have put all of the city of Chicago at risk. As of late this afternoon, Balki Bartokamous is licensed to drive.

Like most of these stories, it all started at the Ritz. Balki was stamping price tags on cans of motor oil (we literally sell everything under the sun within the 800 square feet of this discount store) and tossing them high up in the air for me to catch and stack instead of just handing them to me like a grownup who doesn't want to make a mess would. I have to admit we had a nice little pattern going, but why add the risk? Because Balki, that's why.

Twinkacetti strolled in in a decent mood, possibly because for the first time ever Balki was already at work when he arrived. He was showing off that he'd just had his driver's license renewed, which seems like a weird thing to brag about - but the old man kind of pulled a humblebrag about the announcement like he had won the license in an arm wrestling tournament or something, no big deal, happens all the time. It was bizarre. 

Of course, Balki was blown away. He literally asked Twinkie if getting his new license made him aroused - He's moved beyond subtle language-barrier mishaps and into full-blown overt perversion - and went on and on about what a big deal having a driver's license is. Between the two of them I'm starting to wonder if having a license is a bigger deal than I thought; but that's not the important part of the story. What's important is that Balki was enchanted by the license, and suspecting where this was going immediately, my life flashed before my eyes as I imagined myself screaming in the passenger seat while Balki drove my car off a bridge.

Balki started whining about how he isn't a real man or something because he doesn't have a driver's license, and in the first legitimately funny thing he's said since he arrived, he sincerely thanked Twinkie and I for letting him hang out with us anyway. At that point, we learned that Balki holds the ownership of a driver's license in a weirdly high esteem. When I told him it's really no big deal and just a piece of paper he launched into a series of hyperbolic analogies about the value of a license like "Is the Lincoln Memorial only a building? Is Mount Rushmore only a chunk of stone?" I quietly started wondering what Balki thinks a driver's license actually is, like maybe "driver's license" in Myposian means "vagina magnet." He then informed us that Mypos only has one car, and I realized that that translation was basically spot-on. Twinkacetti, meanwhile, got all xenophobic and started busting Balki's balls about his home country. So I took my new approach with the Turnip, attempting to win him over by declaring myself his friend and offering to teach him to drive in hopes of controlling his worst impulses.

You'd think it would dawn on me that putting Balki behind the wheel of a two ton motor vehicle seems a little premature in his first-world development program considering he still thinks the toilet is a ghost hippo that feeds on poops, but after that whole driver's license boner conversation with Twinkie I suspected he doesn't actually want the license to drive as much as he just wants it for the boners. So after deciding America's safety would not be compromised, I promised to teach Balki to drive. However, he wanted the driving lessons in the 'Stang, which no way bro. Twinkacetti saw my hesitation and pounced. He needled me relentlessly, expertly projecting Balki's capacity for failure onto me and betting me fifty bones that "the yo-yo" would fail his driver's test. Now I'm backed in a corner and when this dog gets backed in a corner I'm gonna bite, right? So I take the bet and instantly regret it. Here we go.

I stalled Balki out for a week by making him read the manual for the written test over and over until he finally caught on and called me on my bullshit, and the lessons began. We started out slow; I sat on the coffee table and invited Balki to sit next to me. For no good reason he slammed his imaginary car door, and I told him not to ever... EVER do that again. Maybe a little over the top, I know, but I was already hella stressed and he's slamming doors? We were sitting in a metaphorical gas-soaked tinderbox and I was just waiting for Balki to light the spark. He started whining about how it was kind of hard to pretend to drive without the gearshift and gas and brake pedals, so I created a fake gearshift out of the plunger, gas pedal from a box of frozen peas and a brake out of a grapefruit and you probably think you know where this is going.

Quick digression - assigning the grapefruit as a brake pedal is something I wouldn't have been dumb enough to do a month ago. It's indicative of how Balki's live-wire antics have pushed me out of the thoughtful, careful mindset I lived in for the last 23 years and honestly, I've started doing some stupid shit out of frustration or anxiety. At this pace I fear a near future where I just give up on reality entirely and stop thinking anything through at all before I act. I need to get Balki out of my life before it's too late.

Anyway, driving lesson. With Balki's imaginary car set up, we start a completely illogical driving exercise where I'm just describing to Balki that we're in traffic and he should speed up or slow down based on things I'm dreaming up in the moment. I fully recognize this is not the way to teach anyone to drive, but maybe I can scare him off from getting behind the wheel of the 'Stang for several more years if I make it confusing enough. Needless to say, I planned to create a cascading series of driving emergencies that Balki had no choice but to react to as I screamed at him - including just shouting "look out!" in order to terrify Balki enough that he might give up. I didn't even get to the second disaster event. When I screamed "look out!" in his ear, Balki let go of the imaginary wheel and curled up in a ball, just waiting to die.

I scolded him for letting go of the wheel and covering his eyes, but Balki called me on how my driving instructions didn't make any sense, and fair enough. So I finally promised that if he didn't hit anything during a few more spins around the living room (a scenario I was in complete control of since I was making up things for him to hit) we could try my car. Here's where your expectations are diverted: Checkov's grapefruit never got stomped on. Instead, while Balki attempted a "right turn" and I started yelling "signal, signal, signal!" he swung his right arm out to signal like a bicyclist and violently knocked me off the coffee table and over the couch.

Balki is frighteningly strong for someone so stupid.

Although Balki had failed my test - he didn't just hit something imaginary, he hit a very real Cousin Larry - I agreed to take him out on the road for real because I'm the dumbest man alive and it's entirely possible he hit me on purpose to remind me who's in charge. So we headed over to the parking lot, where Balki immediately crashed into a runaway shopping cart because he was dumb enough to not recognize that me yelling "hit the grapefruit!" means "hit the brake." I had made it all so simple! We stormed into the Ritz, where Susan and Twinkacetti were hanging out (weird) and I reported what had happened while Balki launched into a pity party so indulgent that even Twinkie seemed to be sad about it. Balki went full drama queen, saying he's the worst person alive and according to Mypos custom he needs to banish himself far away.

FINALLY! I figured Balki would leave Chicago when the last drops of blood left my body, but it turns out it just took a couple dings in the Mustang to shoo him off. I made no attempt to stop him.

Well, of course I couldn't be so lucky. Instead of actually going far away like the custom required, Balki had just retreated upstairs to the apartment where he hid under blankets and sulked around dramatically. This being plain evidence that his Myposian banishment custom was actually total crap and he was just fishing for pity, I should've just left him to mope until he got over it or moved out. But his put-on misery was so over the top that, Lord help me, I broke. And there I was, apologizing to Balki again for something he did to ME. And I didn't just have to apologize; I had to convince him to get back after his dream. Balki had given up on seeking a driver's license after the first 5 minutes behind the wheel, so I launched into a Joshua Chamberlain-quality inspirational speech that involved the two of us singing America the Beautiful and Balki running through a series of mixed metaphors about sheep to put him back on track.

It worked like a charm. And so, in a mixture of weakness and inspiration from my own oratory skills, I handed Balki the keys.

That same day I guess - we were wearing the same clothes - Balki and I rolled into the DMV to get him a license. Balki has been living in America for a few weeks. He has been driving for a few hours, tops. This is too soon. But we needed to put an end to this adventure so we can move on to the next insane shenanigan that he's sure to take me on next week, so there we were.

I had no faith in Balki to answer the simple line of questioning volleyed at him at the DMV so I started answering for him, until I was shouted down by the nasty old coot at the counter, who went on to administer an eye test to Balki. After a series of mishaps - like Balki covering both of his eyes at the same time, and at one point covering the proctor's eyes - they worked through it - and it turns out that much like his show of strength earlier, Balki has superhuman vision, too. You understand why I go so far out of my way to stay on his good side. It's like living with a bull. You don't have to like it, but you sure as hell have to be nice to it if you don't want it to go off on you.

Balki went on to take the written test, and he completed it in four seconds flat. I take 100 percent credit for this since I made him read that manual ten thousand times. He only got one question wrong, and then a disturbing first show of arrogance burst through when he insisted that the proctor rescore the test. It didn't matter - he'd still passed with flying colors - but Balki was insistent. Having seen the kind of disaster that Balki can create when someone angers him, I played it cool. Sure enough, the guy re-read the test and Balki had a perfect 100 after all. He was feeling all cool about it but he didn't realize that he'd wised off to the guy responsible for him getting a driver's license because of his stupid pride.

So Balki and the mean old guy headed out to take the driving test, and never came back. After two hours I finally headed to the Ritz, where Twinkie immediately assumed Balki has failed and told me that I owed him $50. I naturally went a step further and assumed Balki has died on the road, but then he wandered in with a blank look on his face and a story about how he accidentally got on the expressway, and the proctor - Frank - sort of had a heart attack, and Balki took him to the hospital. Turned out Balki's adventure on the expressway had just triggered a case of indigestion in old Frank, and the guy was so happy he wasn't dead that he gave Balki his license.

Can we talk about how big of a problem that is? Balki didn't earn the license at all. He has been driving for exactly one day, and he's already been in an accident and wandered onto the expressway during a driving test, nearly killing the proctor in the process. Frank should be fired when he gets out of the hospital. This was a happy ending for exactly one person on the whole planet. The roads are a little less safe today. Insult to injury, after we had a nice bonding moment Balki revealed that he'd locked the keys in the car.

But at the same time I made fifty clams off Twinkie, so I'm walkin on sunshine.