Junk About A Trunk

Ever since I have known her, and it hasn't been very long though it feels like a lifetime (in a good way), Giggles has had a trunk issue. Not a trunk issue of the Black Eyed Peas variety, wherein if the problem was too much junk inside her trunk, all she’d have to do would be get you drunk, love drunk off her hump and it would be fixed. No, this was more of an issue where the trunk of her car would close, but not the entire way so it would appear to be open. The latch was rusting away and it meant everyone who had ever ridden in her car would ask if it was closed properly, forcing Giggles to explain the entire situation nearly every time she drove her car.

Recently, things came to a head, when we set out on an adventure to get an oil change for her beloved Alero. We dropped the car off in Canmore and while we waited, went to find food. We stopped in at a bakery where we were fortunate enough to receive a microwaved sausage roll and spinach triangle. There’s just something so delectable about soggy pastry, isn't there? And when we went to pick the car up, the elderly gentlemen at the counter pointed out what Gigs and I already knew – her trunk doesn't shut properly.

The conversation went a little something like this:

Oil man: “Your trunk isn't closing properly on your car, you know.”

Gigs: “I know, it has been like that for a while now.”

Oil man: “You wanna get that fixed, because the thing is, when you’re driving on the highway the gas that comes out of your exhaust swirls around and with your trunk open like that it will get into your car.”

Gigs: “Oh, right.”

Oil man: “So one of two things will happen, you’ll get a headache, or you won’t know what’s happening.

“Because you’ll be dead.

“You don’t want to commit suicide, do you?”

And the Oscar for overreacting in a mechanic shop drama goes to…

This conversation got Giggles thinking. It was time to try and repair the trunk and make it close properly once and for all. As she dropped me home after our day out, we retrieved some items from the trunk and then attempted to close it. But it was then the mechanism that latches the trunk closed decided to rust out and fall off, leaving Gigs with 20 kilometres to drive with an open trunk.

“Wait, I've got my emergency string!” Giggles cried. So, in the dark and bitter cold, she lay on her stomach and reached through from the back seat with a flash-light in her mouth, and tied that bastard trunk down. But emergency string can only hold for so long.

PJ pimping. 

Enter PJ, and his faux reality program ‘PJ Pimp My Trunk’. On a cold Thanksgiving weekend afternoon, the trunk was finally to be fixed. Sparks were flying, from the handheld circular saw, as PJ worked his magic. Giggles was stressed out and wondering if this was going to work out. Would the trunk be fixed or would there be something in the way to stop this goal being reached? A hole was drilled and a bolt put in place – but would the trunk finally close? Clunk. Obviously not. Returning to the drawing board, another hole was drilled and another bolt put in place. Success! The trunk closed, and even better than before, you could barely tell there was anything wrong with it. It was like a brand new car, until we tried to put something in the trunk and close it again. Much like a carefree vagabond, the newly bolted latch hook would not stay in place.

The story is not complete without a final stroke of genius. Gigs remembered the cable ties she had been hoarding in her room. Perhaps it’s to do with her crafting addiction, but you have to admit the woman is very resourceful. She used the cable ties to secure the newly bolted hook down, and just like that, the trunk would open and close, open and close as if it had just rolled off the showroom floor. 

Now if only the interior light would stop falling out of the roof and the rear-view mirror wouldn't fall from the windscreen...