The floorboards are covered in cardboard to hide the gaping holes. Some pieces have duct tape on the edge but it’s long lost its stick, the underside of the tape coated in dirt and nameless filth. As the car bounces over bumps, the cardboard jumps and scatters, occasionally showing a glimpse of the road passing beneath us.

I am eight years old and my legs are still too short to reach, the toes of my Keds dangling dangerously above the cardboard trap. I am pretending I am Indiana Jones cautiously navigating the rocky lip of a lava pit, the Nazi’s in close pursuit. One false step and I’m done for. If I move too slowly, I’m dog food for the villains.

“Oh god damn it!” He’s swearing at the Cincinnati Reds through the car’s AM radio. They are taking a beating from some team I don’t care about. The whole thing is boring. He curses again, but this time because the station has drifted during a line drive and he’s frantic with the knob to pull it back in. I love the frequency squeal the radio makes as he jerks the dial around. It reminds me of R2D2.

“Cock sucker!” He’s unable to get the station back. He’s angry; a menacing looking troll in the glow of the dashboard. “Climb into the back and find me a hanger.”

Indiana Jones’s adventure take a turn for the worse. I climb onto my seat and lean over the back. The smell of aged ketchup wafts up from the bowels of the back seat. The floor on the left is piled with empty McDonalds bags and empty styrofoam coffee cups, the lips and sides stained black-brown. The backseat is filled haphazard with german magazines, mostly with nude women on the covers, and books on astrology. A lot of books on astrology. Behind him, on the ground, is a bag of laundry in a black trash bag, a lone hanger poked out of the side. It’s too far to reach, so I hoist myself over, landing on the magazines and something slightly wet that was hiding behind them. My fingers are covered in ketchup, a misplaced bag of fries smashed between the backseat and a huge book on Uranus. I clean my hand by rubbing it on the back of his seat, smearing it as far as I can reach. Satisfying.

The hanger does not want to come loose from the bag of clothes. I wrestle with it, throwing all 30 pounds of my weight into it, but it’s wound tight on a coffee stained t-shirt with FLORIDA printed across its front. I give a last tug and the hanger comes free, but I land in the McDonalds bags, more ketchup on my leg. I scrape it off with the hanger realizing I will be smelling it for the rest of the night.

“Did you get it?”

Got it old man. I start the climb back over but slip as I crest the edge and fall head first towards the cardboard trap floor. My hands miss catching a grip on the edge of the front seat, so I jerk my arms forward and find resistance on what remains of the floor. My head is touching the cardboard and I can hear the road just beneath it, the chunky beating of the drive train, the loud grind of the wheels on the asphalt. The cardboard stinks of ketchup.

“For fuck’s sake!” He grabs me by the back of my shirt and pulls me onto the front seat. “Be more careful, god damn it.”

Just then the radio comes back into focus and the monotone announcer continues the plodding play by play.

And like that, the whole thing never happened.

I pick up the now useless hanger and use it as a makeshift pistol against the storming Nazi’s.