The Sickness.


When walking through tall weeds on an old farm, one might come in contact with a mysterious looking 4x4.
"Dude, look at that. It's not a jeep, it's not a bronco. What is it?" BLAM!!! That's when the incubation period
starts. It's followed by sleepless nights, difficulty breathing, difficulty swallowing, lack of concentration at
work. You start to hallucinate. Every automobile you see is a Scout. Pretty soon you are scouring the papers
and Ebay looking for "your rig" even though you don't know the first thing about trucks and how to work on
them. When you eventually find "the one" the future PO tells you that it needs this, this, this, and this, but
you're not really listening.

You don't see the rust, guapo, ripped upholstery, and holes in the floorboard. You see yourself rambling over
sand dunes, careening over snowbanks in your lifted, modded, and tricked dreadnought-of-a-binder while the
hot blonde next to you is squealing with delight. Then you spin out and come to a stop in a lush green field.
As you turn to your buxom babe, you peek over your Ray-Bans and retrieve two chilled spritzers from the
console cooler, and the both of you erupt into maniacal laughter.

Next comes an acute pain in your glutes area, most likely caused by the burning from your wallet. This is
generally accompanied stiffened joints, muscle soreness, and minor dehydration from laying under and
leaning over your new purchase all night, trying to make sense of the machinations that take place there.
The next symptom is severe redness of the face, due to repeated smacking by your significant other in
trying to arrest your attention back towards her. This symptom is prone to linger on, especially after hearing
comments like, "There's all these weird charges on our card, honey. Who is 'Scoutparts.com and Binderbooks?'"

Although modern medicine has been successful in treating illnesses of many kinds, Doctors are reticent to speak
about adult-onset Binderfixemia, a cruel disease which affects the brain, central nervous sytem, and pretty much
everything else. As of today, there is no cure. But with regular treatments (often depleting the majority of the
patient's discretionary income), a semi-normal life can be enjoyed.

Posted by Joel, on The Binder Bulletin.
Replicated here with his permission.