If you are a long time reader of TPSAYE (in all of its five months of glory), you will recall that earlier this fall I bent a new suit of canvas on to my jeep.

If you happen to have wandered over to the Llamas any time in the past few days, you will know that my jeep was broken into at the Metro parking lot last week, the villain(s) making off with a few rolls of tollbooth quarters but nothing else, as I do not keep valuables in so insecure a location.

The villain(s) knew what he or they were about.  I took this photo of my baby just after I had put on her new top.  Imagine now, if you will, a ten or eleven inch gash running horizontally across the canvas just under the driver’s side window.  It was by inflicting this gash that he or they were able to reach through and unlock the door from the inside and proceed to plunder.  (Why I even bothered to lock it, I cannot say.  In the summer, I usually leave the doors off altogether.  I’ve been doing this for better than ten years at this parking lot and have never had any trouble before.)

Aaaaanyway,  I now have a slashed door to deal with.  On a temporary basis, just to keep out the cold, I have duct-taped the wound, but it is quite obvious that this can only be a temporary bandage.   (Mrs. R, who does not like my jeep, remarked snidely that it was the only kind of car with which I could get away with this without looking conspicuously cheesy.)  The question is what to do about a permanent solution.  Replacement doors go for a couple of hundred bucks, which I have no real inclination to spend at the moment.  On the other hand, try as I might, I don’t seem to be able to find any kind of patching or repair kit.

It occurs to me that perhaps I could suture the slash back together using some kind of waterproof thread.  What do you think?  Would such a dueling scar give Robbo’s jeep an air of romance and mystery?  Could I drop the suggestion that it was picked up owing to some unpleasantness with a rhino the last time I drove across the Dark Continent?  Or perhaps that she received it when I found myself thwarting a terrorist plot to kidnap the Queen (hushed up by Western governments and press, of course)?  Perhaps I could just grimmace at any mention or inquiry and say that I would prefer not to talk about it.

Would women nudge each other as I drove by and ask themselves what secret must lie behind that mild-mannered face?  Or would I just look like some guy who was too cheap to buy a replacement window panel?