‘Dick Dastardly,’ my boyfriend says, ‘is the best of the Wacky Racers.’
I grunt and turn over. We’ve had this argument before. He knows I think he’s talking shit.
‘It’s true. He gets so far ahead of everyone else that he can afford to spend ages setting up elaborate traps loaded with bombs and spikes. If he just kept right on driving instead, he’d win every time by miles. But he doesn’t believe in himself. That’s why he keeps resorting to sabotage. You know what Einstein said? “The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”? That’s Dick Dastardly to a tee.’
The patronising wanker thinks he’s some sort of intellectual just because he owns a copy of A Brief History of Time, but he clearly doesn’t know that Einstein almost certainly never said that. It’s unsubstantiated at best. I think about telling him to do his damn research, but I don’t. Instead I say, ‘Professor Pat Pending should win every time. He has a fucking aeroplane.’
He disagrees. Course he does. I said it, so he would. ‘His plane’s a tinpot, though,’ he says. ‘It’s more of a boat with wings if anything. He’s a ridiculous little man. No, Dick Dastardly is definitely the best, even if his results don’t show it.’
‘Whatever. Goodnight.’
‘Are you cross with me, babe?’
I am. Whenever we have this conversation about the best Wacky Racer, he never suggests that maybe, just maybe, it might be me. No, he thinks I’m just some dumb blonde bimbo with a silly pink cadillac who couldn’t possibly compete with the men, especially not him with his penis extension car and ridiculous chin. But I can’t be fucked to argue right now.
‘No, Peter. Go to sleep.’
Peter frigging Perfect. He’s certainly not that. Especially in bed. I’m thinking about dumping him for one of the Slag Brothers. Doesn’t matter which one, they both look the same.
‘Okay, then. Goodnight, Penelope.’
Peter starts snoring like a mammoth with sinusitis. Another sleepless night for me. No wonder my win/loss record is so crappy.
Drat and double drat.
I sit up, turn on the lamp, glare at Peter’s fucking butter-wouldn’t-melt face and wonder what Dick Dastardly would do in my situation.
Next morning, we leave the house. I clamber into my car. Peter’s about to do the same, but then he screams. ‘Someone’s slashed my tyres!’ he wails.
I snigger to myself like that mutt of Dastardly’s, tidy my make-up, floor the accelerator and race off down the street, leaving Peter a pinprick in my rear view mirror. I can already feel that first place finish.
David Cook loves Wacky Races. If you’d like to talk about Wacky Races with him, he’s on Twitter @davidcook100. He lives in Bridgend, Wales, with his wife and daughter. His car is depressingly un-wacky.