A Love Letter To My Car
Dear Car,
I purchased you for only $3,090 back in 2003. I don’t recall why that figure wasn’t rounder. It certainly should have been higher. You were only 8 years old back then. I drove you for almost another 8. You spent half of your life with me.
You were a good-looking car. Always tan and lean. Not lean and mean, mind you. Lean and approachable. Lean with a welcoming invitation to spend time together.
I sure did take you up on that invitation, didn’t I? When we first met, you had been driven 106 thousand miles. When I said goodbye, you were somewhere around 230. Sometimes, we drove to places nearby. Remember all those times we went for ice cream? And then, we took trips to far away places. We even went to different countries together if you count Texas. I even wrote about you during that time. Don’t you remember?
I will admit that things were awkard between you and I at first. How odd it was for me to get used to wrapping my knees around your steering mechanism so they would fit. I never once thought about how uncomfortable it may have made you feel. Looking back, I think you were okay with it. I think you knew how much I liked you. For that reason, I think you liked me in return.
You took me to classes and games and my first full-time jobs. We reflected on things together on long rides home. Then, there were times when it wasn’t just you and me. You saw people I picked up and dropped off and listened in on conversations that meant the world to me.
When I wasn’t using you, you sat outside – oftentimes in the bitter cold. You just stayed there – waiting for me. When I did come, you did your best to keep me warm and take me where I needed to go. I rarely spent time with you solely for the purpose of being together. Even then, it was only to listen to the end of Lionel Ritchie songs from your speakers. You were always a means to an end, yet never complained.
I was a young man when I first got you. I’m not so young anymore. At the same time, you aged too. First, your window wouldn’t close. Then, your dashboard lights went out. Then, the radio. Then, the air conditioner. Then the thing that pops the hood open. Then there was the time I backed you into a tree and brushed you across a guard rail. We were both so happy for that screw which reattached your front bumper. Then the grill came off. Then, I couldn’t even open you until I went to the passenger side. Even then, the key didn’t work so well on that side either.
They started telling me to get rid of you. I tried to hide this from you for so long. It pains me to even say it, but you weren’t stupid. You had a feeling something was brewing. I wasn’t even tempted to let you go. I would do anything for air conditioning, but I wouldn’t do that. No, no, I wouldn’t do that. How could we part ways after all we had been through? How could I say goodbye after how you had treated me?
But the outside pressure started getting to me. First, I agreed to consider getting rid of you in the summer. Then in the fall. Or Christmas. Or when I got my bonus. Still, I resisted. The thought of separation was too painful. I would not cave. You would have to be ripped apart from me before I would let you go.
And ripped apart you were. In those last moments we were crusing along until someone (surely a New York Yankees fan) cut us off. I was so focused on giving him an angry glare, I had no idea that your front right wheel was about to be sliced open and our time together was about to end. After operating, we learned that the problem ran much deeper. Your entire front end was gone. I couldn’t watch you suffer. You were no longer fit for the roads. You had to be put to sleep. You were a cross between The Little Engine That Could and a filly that runs injured and has to be put down after a race. You gave me everything you had – right until you died.
Eventually, my memories of the times we shared together will fade. I will move on to another car – probably a better one by most standards. But you, despite all your imperfections, will always mean something to me. You will mean my 20’s and everything that went with it. You weren’t just any car. You were my car. And, sometime between the knee straddling and last abrupt moments together on Route 128, something happened. I fell in love with you. So, goodbye, car. If you could talk, we’ld sure have a lot of stories.
Cam the Camry :10/07/03 – 01/25/11
Could I borrow your binoculars?
I went with my father to the Patriots pre-season game against the Saints on Thursday. The stadium was big and beautiful, kind of like my biceps. We walked up about 14 ramps, and, after fighting traffic, parking lots and hunger, finally made it to our seats with 12 minutes to go in the third quarter.
By the time we got there, all the starters had been taken out and they were playing the 3rd string. At one point, I was excited to see veteran running-back Fred Taylor carrying the ball. However, we eventually realized that it was actually a different running back named Chris Taylor. Chris… Fred… what’s the difference anyway?
At one point, I spotted Reggie Bush on the sidelines. I could tell it was him, because I could make out the number 25 on his shirt. I was about a mile away from him, so that was pretty good. I also saw Coach Bill, Randy Moss and my friend Tom Brady. They weren’t playing, of course, but they did look nice on the sidelines.
Even as we were getting to the stadium, people were leaving. By the time we got there, the place was about 35% full. Toward the end of the fourth quarter, that number dropped to about 10%. One thing that struck me about the game was how quiet it was. There wasn’t a lot of the extra-curricular stuff that goes on at sporting events during timeouts, like contests or shooting T-shirts into the crowd. The place was pretty much dead.
But dead was just what I needed. After all the work it took to get there, I didn’t need any more stimulation. Seeing the stadium and Reggie and Coach Bill and Tom was enough. It was also good to be with my Dad.
Not even the cheerleaders were into this game
Antique Gum
Back when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sooser were having their home run battle, I wandered into a baseball card shop. Hoping to pull McGwire’s rookie card, I purchased a pack of 1984 Topps for about 5 bucks. Well, to my surprise and horror, the stick of gum was still in there. At first, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I couldn’t chew it, because it was unchewable. If I had dropped it on the floor, it would have split into tiny little pieces. But I couldn’t waste it. A 14-year old stick of gum was too rare and valuable. So, I did what any curious person would do. I ate it. It didn’t taste great, but there was a little bit of powdered sugar still on the top. It was like antique candy.
In case you are curious, the cards were awful. No Tony Gwynn or Cal Ripken, Jr. Heck, there wasn’t even a Joe Sambito. They were all commons. Also, the package opened up so easily, my guess is that someone had already gone through it, pulled the good ones, and had it resealed. Of course, the irony is that even I had pulled the Mark McGwire rookie card, that might not be worth $5 these days either.
Save the Last Dance for Me
Today, I visited the school where I interned as a guidance counselor five years ago. I found some stuff at a yard sale I thought they could use and decided to make a surprise visit. Really, it just gave me an excuse to see some old friends.
These are people I care about more than I able to express. And, that is a major part of the problem – I didn’t know how to express how much I care. Sure, there was an initial hug and maybe even a kiss on the cheek. There was a “how have you been?” and “what are you up to?” They are ingredients to the conversational dance. There is a rhythm to this kind of thing. It’s like getting ready to end a phone conversation. Someone starts to wrap it up. The other person knows what is coming. One goodbye follows another.
Throughout the conversational dance, I most sorely wanted to communicate one thing: “I. Love. You.” But, I’ve never been all that great at dancing. I just sort of sat there and tried to focus. I tried to focus on somehow communicating how much I cared, but I was overwhelmed. Words weren’t helping me. The best I knew how to say, “I love you”, was by bringing that bag of toys.
I stayed for about an hour. It was a Friday afternoon. There was a lot happening. A soccer ball in gym class accidentally hit someone in the face. A child hadn’t shown up for detention. There were rumors of a fight happening after school. It is a busy place, really. It’s like being an emergency room doctor and a firefighter all at once. It’s like using the bopper to try to hammer down all the things that pop up in that game at Chuck E. Cheese. In Middle School, everything is an emergency. There are hearts in need of healing in every room.
Eventually, everyone was tied up and it was time for me to go. My heart was heavy as I exited the building. The emotions came rushing like a flood about to sweep me away. And I was swept away. I was swept five years into the past. The sights brought back the sounds. The sounds were of girls laughing on the playground and boys playing ball. There was the sound of the shuffling feet as the kids came in from recess and the folding of tables as the custodian cleaned up after lunch. Other sounds were softer. Like the drop of a tear.
I can’t really separate the mixture of emotions. There was sorrow mixed with gladness. Anxiety blended with peace. Longing for what was mixed with acceptance with what is and sadness for what could have been. You can go home again. You just might find someone else living in your old room. In this case, my old room had had some maintenance issues. Water was leaking through the ceiling. It was now being used for storage. I think there was some kind of issue with the pipes.
The teachers who are still there continue to make new memories with each other. They live new stories while I retell old ones. I am a flash in the pan which unexpectedly surfaced for a few moments to display some forgotten shine. The rush is still sweeping over me. Like some other reunions, I feel like I want to puke. What do you do with emotions so strong? How do you make sense of things which continue to confuse? Why do the right words to say always seem so far out of reach? What if you never can communicate how much you care?
I feel like my car always did when I took that familiar bumpy path along the back dirt road to exit the premises. Each sight is a memory. Each memory is an open wound. Each wound is a casualty of love. My heart hurts. All of our hearts are hurting. There is a rhythm to saying goodbye. There is a cadence to it. It is a rhythm that no matter how many times I’ve done it before, I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to. I don’t think we were ever meant to say goodbye in the first place.
And, apart from making national news due to a pregnancy pact, I wonder what ever happened to those kids.
I know Bill Simmons
It isn’t often that I’m aware of someone long before that person becomes famous. Apart from Adam Sandler and I don’t know who else, there just aren’t many people who hit it big from New Hampshire.
The lack of famous athletes drives the point home. I had to chuckle when, in 1999, Sports Illustrated put together a list of the 50 greatest sports figures ever to hail from the Granite State. A ski coach was ranked #6 (Bob Beattie anyone?), a rower #22 (silver medallist in the men’s four without coxswain) and an umpire at #39 (an umpire?). Ex-Yankee slugger Steve Balboni checked in at #19, and, rather than expounding upon his accomplishments, SI mentions that he struck out 166 times in one season. It’s hard to even say that he hit it big. After all, he didn’t hit much of anything. The editor for The Union Leader newspaper came in at #49. Let me type that again. The editor for The Union Leader came in at #49. The editor for the newspaper? Are you kidding me? A soap box junior division champ rounded out the list at #50. Honestly, I don’t even know what the soap box is. And, couldn’t we have at least had the senior division champ?
I went through and counted how many of these people I had ever heard of. Bear in mind that I love sports and am a New Hampshire native. Well, I counted 9 out of 50. That is 18%. So, yeah, if sports is an indicator of overall famous people, there aren’t any. The most famous person from New Hampshire wasn’t even a person. It was a rock formation on a side of a mountain that looked like a man. Everyone was so excited about rock man, they put it on the license plates, driver’s license, interstate signs, state quarter, state documents and Lord knows what else. This was all well and good until he crumbled to his death back in 2003. The face of New Hampshire disappeared. Now, there is no face of New Hampshire. There is no person, symbol or sports figure (unless you count #11-while-still-in-college Matt Bonner) to rally upon. Even politically, the state is becoming more and more ambiguous. There is no identity. The only thing left is our state motto: “Live Free or Die”. It gives us a toughness. It makes us sound bad. We may have a lot of cows, but at least we know how to drive in the snow.
I say all this because, there is one person I knew before everyone else did. Yeah, you may question how well I knew him. After all, I knew him much better than he knew me. But I knew him. I knew Bill Simmons. I knew him because he wrote out of the overflow of his heart and I read every word.
It was early 1997 and my father had just purchased a Micron computer at Christmastime for over $2,000. I don’t remember much about that computer, except that the monitor was small and the computer was slow. Really, really slow. We went with the America Online trial and I was online before you could say “Prodigy”. I spent a lot of time on the Interwebs in those days. I still do. The only difference now is that I don’t tie up the phone lines. I even started this blog the following summer. Of course, it wasn’t a blog back then. Blogs didn’t exist. But, I did have a space to write down my thoughts, no matter how quirky they may be.
There was a sports channel on AOL. It was called Digital City. Each area had its own Digital City. Because it didn’t have one of its own, New Hampshire had Boston. New Hampshire has always had Boston. There was a sports writer on Digital City Boston who called himself “The Sportsguy”. He was only available on AOL and only in the greater Boston area. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love. I loved how he was different from everyone else. I loved his creativity. I could tell that he didn’t write columns just to get paid. I knew it was something that he loved and was meant to do.
I interacted with Bill regularly. I called him “The Sports Pimp”. I made the mailbag a number of times. Many of my submissions for the “links” column were included. He didn’t have that many followers back then, so he was very accessible. He made it a point to write back to everyone who wrote to him. One time, I emailed him a joke about Todd Day. He wrote back about a game against the Hawks where the C’s were getting crushed but Todd Day made a bunch of 3′s at the end. He wrote how Day had a disgusting “I got mine” look about him during the fourth quarter. As always, I knew exactly what he was talking about. I knew what he was talking about because I was there. March 9, 1997. It was the Sunday before our High School team would play in the state finals. We were at the same game. I wondered what he looked like. I was curious if maybe we had passed by each other in the crowd.
Eventually, it became impossible for him to respond to every message. He did such a good job with the columns, his popularity grew and grew. I was pumped when I learned that he was going to be doing an interview on the radio. I remember just about every word he wrote about the time he did a TV spot with Bob Lobel. I was thrilled when I learned that he had signed on with ESPN. This guy I followed from basically nowhere was rising to the top in front of my very eyes. I felt like I was the one being promoted.
Our lives have gone in drastically different directions. Simmons has become a hugely popular writer. His podcast is among the most listened to. His second book just came out. He is a household name. He has a family and now lives in California. He’s even starting to make more and more appearances on TV.
After living in Boston for a number of years, I am back in New Hampshire. I am out of work. I don’t have a family. I ran out of money and am living with my parents. My car is falling apart. I make money by selling sneakers on eBay. I am getting old. My life feels the furthest thing from a success.
I am still very happy that Bill made it so big. There is one part, though, that makes me sad. Bill Simmons has no idea who I am. If I were to meet him, I would be just another of his adoring fans. I wouldn’t be able to talk to him about which of his columns I particularly enjoyed or tell him which of his recurring jokes I like the most. I couldn’t ask him about that girl he wrote about over 10 years ago whom he wasn’t speaking with anymore. There is no way I could communicate everything I would want to communicate in 30 seconds. There is no way he could know me like I know him. I would be just another face in the crowd.
It is a one-sided relationship. Unfortunately, the same can be said about my relationships with many of the people I’ve really cared about. But I know Bill Simmons. I know him and love him the same.
