Is a sort of an oxymoron, but in fact, if done properly can be one of the very epitome if low humor. Best if the victim ends up with a headwound, or loses bladder and/or bowel control. Better yet if the victim is incapable of retaliation.

In 1969, at the ripe old age of ten, I rode in the backseat of my uncle Calvin’s 1950 Studebaker Commander, next to my uncle Donald, who was sleeping off a drunk and smelled.. well, he smelled pretty bad, even to a ten year old who is unaffected by playing with wet dogs who have a habit of rolling in cowshit.

Dad is siting in the front seat smoking his pipe, Calvin driving. We’re going fishing, and to do so we have to drive down some hilly country roads, and we soon got ourselves trapped on a single lane tarmacadam behind a wrecker towing a truck.

As we followed the truck, no place to pull off, we notice that as the wrecker crests a hill, the semi that it is towing backwards looks very much as though it’s heading toward us at speeds in excess of 70. Calvin points it out, dad an I enjoy the phenomenon, and then the puffing of dad’s pipe slows, a sign he’s engaged in deep thought.

Dad turns and says “lock your door” I do, and squish myself ever further away from the snoring Donald. Dad’s a big man, and reaching all the way to the back seat of the old Studebaker is no big deal- just as the wrecker is about to crest the hill, dad reaches back and grabs Donald by the collar, pulls him to the center rear of the front seat and hollers in his ear “DAMMIT, DONALD, LOOK AT THAT!” Donald, still bleary with eye boogers and booze, takes one look at the semi tractor ostensibly bearing down on us and does something that nobody expects: he gets out.

Now, we’re doing around 50. The Commander has suicide doors, rear doors that open backwards, and donald bails like a jet pilot pulling the loud handle; as he rolls on the ground the open door thumps him hard upside the head and lays him out. To his great credit, he’d grabbed me by the elbow and tried to rescue me as well- a quick thinking dad grabbed my other elbow and prevented me from being launched. Calvin and dad have to pull off the road. Calvin is laughing hard enough that he has to stagger off to the treeline and piss, dad is rolling on the ground holding his gut, he’s laughing so hard. . Donald is out like a fish. Calvin, dad and I drag him into the back of the commander and go fishing. By the time we get there Dondald has come around again, having remembered none of it, attributing the splitting headache to the cheap whiskey.

To my knowledge, nobody ever told him.

THe look on his face, as he leapt out of the old stude, I will remember as long as I live.