THE OTHER day, my wife Elizabeth and I arranged to see one of the new blockbuster action movies we've heard about.
After settling our daughter with her baby sitter, we got into the family Toyota."It's wired!" Elizabeth shouted when I turned the key.
She flung open her door and dragged me onto the driveway and over the azaleas. Just as we hit the grass, the car exploded, launching a fireball high into the air and scattering shards of metal all over the street.
We decided it would be better to take the baby sitter's Miata.
Halfway to the theater, we stopped at a light. A black Humvee swerved toward us. I spun the steering wheel and hit the gas, mounting the sidewalk, knocking over two mailboxes, a parking meter and seven crates of vegetables in front of a grocer's.
Sending pedestrians flying, I smashed the Miata through a coffee-bar window and zigzagged around the espresso machine and a jar of vanilla biscotti before bursting through the back wall into the parking lot. Then I drove straight under a tractor-trailer, ripping the roof off the Miata but losing the Humvee.
With 25 minutes left before show time, I continued toward the multiplex.
We couldn't find a parking space. I patrolled the streets as a wind blew up.
"It's a supercell!" Elizabeth shouted into the roar.
An F-3 tornado touched down outside the pet store across the street. The Miata was sucked up into the funnel. Three poodles and a cloud of iridescent guppies gyrated past. The car was about to disintegrate when we were blown free.
We landed safely on an island in the Potomac. Suddenly we were surrounded by revolutionaries who held AK-47s to our heads. This was annoying, since the movie was to start in 10 minutes.
But Elizabeth had a plan. After we were thrown into an underground cell, she freed us from our restraints and hauled me through a rat-infested air duct into the rebels' armory. I lowered her on wires past heat sensors while she frantically disarmed missiles aimed at downtown Washington (with three seconds to spare)!
Then while engaging in the sardonic banter that is a trademark of our marriage ("You can dismantle warheads," I said, "but where are you when the garbage disposal breaks down?"), we blew up the island using a combination of bazookas and ground-to-air rockets.
When we dragged ourselves out on the opposite shore, we were delighted that we'd finally be able to catch our movie.
But Elizabeth pointed to her watch.
"It's 7:07," she said. The movie had begun at 7 p.m.
Disaster! I put my arm around her shoulders as the sky glowed crimson from the conflagration.
"Those action movies are all cheap thrills and special effects anyway," I said, just as an alien spaceship appeared above the White House and blotted out the sun.