It had been hard enough just getting out of the damned car. There was no way I was going to be able reproduce all the contortions I had gone through -- backwards -- to get back in.

I had parked too close to the cart-return corral, giving the door barely a foot of space to swing open. I had managed to get out by sort of oozing through the crack, popping various bits through one at a time, but there was just no way I was going to be able to wedge the sack of fat I laughingly call a body back in the same way. Or, at least not without doing considerable damage to it, the car and the psyche of anybody who happened to be watching.

So on a whim, I just run at the car. The driver's window is rolled all the way down and I plant one hand on the cart-return dealy, another on the top of the car and lift my legs up and through the window, dropping my ass in after them. "Hey!" I think. "It wor--!"

At which point the pain starts.

My leading knee catches the automatic shoulder belt and folds back against my torso, trapped between it and the steering wheel. This, of course, causes the car horn to honk. Continuously.

I push at my knee a bit, but can't get it to budge. People all over the parking lot are looking over at me, wondering why I'm trying to get their attention while ducking down in my seat and turning all those amusing shades of red. A kid, over by the entrance to the store, starts laughing to himself, making jerking gestures with his hands and pointing his mother in my direction.

It never happened that way on the Dukes of Hazzard.