Tino cranked the volume and floored it. Yes! Jovi! Dead Or A-Fucking-Live!
Sambora’s gut-torn solo (pinched harmonics from start to finish) bounced around the Pinto’s interior like a fiery pinball shot straight outta Jersey.
Tino’s scrotum responded to the music with a throbbing twinge in its base. He pressed his knees against the wheel and freed his arms for some serious air guitar.
Out of nowhere, a Lincoln SUV cut a diagonal across the Pinto’s bow. Eager to complete the last few notes in his air-solo, Tino took evasive action with his legs. No good. The Pinto hit the hard shoulder, flipped over once, bounced off its front tires, and endoed 880 degrees. As it hung ten feet in the air over Minnesota, the only sound was the wind. When it landed directly on its rear end, the explosion was instant, the fireball dense and pretty.
Tino’s skin melted, bubbled and finally, flaked off like filo dough.
The 16mm film finished, its loose end pinwheeling in the uptake spool and slapping against the projector’s housing at a slightly faster tempo than the Jovi tune.
Walking home from school that day, Gina wondered how the narrator of the highway safety film knew that Tino’s scrotum felt the way it did.