Talk about life and you get a small, but polite, bit of response from folks. Mention porn like I did in my Monday blog post and your Google Analytics explodes in a traffic orgasm! Maybe it’s just a magic word. Let me try it again…porn. I’ll check analytics tomorrow. In the meantime, my guy and I sold off our extra car this past weekend. This is significant because neither one of us are good about doing things like that. We’re not hoarders, but we have a hell of a time letting some things go. Cars are one of them and that’s been an issue of mine since I was a young lad.
My parents had a red van when I was a preteen and they’d had a bubble window and booth seat installed for me. I had my own place and the vehicle took good care of us. It’s how I saw it through my youthful eyes and when they decided to sell it, I pitched a fit. I even wanted them to store it for me until I was old enough to drive. They didn’t.
Then came the blue van. It was cozier and my parents spent a little extra money having carpet installed a few other amenities, like a cassette deck instead of an 8-track. The problem arose when mom told the guy doing the work that she did NOT want sculpted carpeting. He installed sculpted carpeting. She cried–literally cried–and then pretty much hated both the van and him for it for a very, very long time. Did I ever mention that I get my temperament from my mother? But I digress. We still had the van when I started to drive and let me tell you, I was not in love with it either. Vans are fine, but they’re NOT something I enjoy driving.
Porn! Sorry, thought I’d give it another shot…which is what he said.
So, when I turned 16 and made enough from my job to pay insurance, we went car shopping. My first vehicle was a maroon 1978 Chevy Malibu. It burned oil like a mo-fo and the cheap paint job the previous owners slapped on it came off a little at a time each time I’d wash it. The car we bought when I was a sophomore in college represented the epitome of technology at the time…many, many years earlier when it was made. Yes, I went from a 1978 to a maroon 1979 Ford LTD; the battle tank.
The aforementioned tank lasted until I graduated college and landed my first job in an automotive factory sweating my ass off heating metal parts up to 1600 degrees in the middle of summer and putting them into large presses while wearing a polyester uniform. But that’s when I was able to afford my baby; the black 1995 Talon. We put more miles on her than she had any right to have! We both just loved to travel. Unfortunately, I needed a vehicle that my parents could get in and out of with some amount of ease, so I got my father’s Jeep when the doctor said he could no longer drive and a cousin of mine got my baby. He ran her into the ground rather quickly and I still regret handing her over to him.
Porn! (sigh)
My guy is the same way. He likes to hold on to things that have been a part of his life. I find I’m doing that with some of the movies he and I watch. If we saw it together and got any amount of joy from it, I find a way to add it to my film collection, a collection of good “us” memories. I’ve also been adding a number of films on Blu-Ray that my father once collected on VHS. I never understood his love of Clint Eastwood westerns, but I’m discovering them for myself now. I just wish he could share the experience, only it’s a conversation that will have to wait until the next life.
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Kage Alan is the Captain America: The First Avenger watching, Journey listening author of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Sexual Orientation,” “Andy Stevenson Vs. the Lord of the Loins” and the first book in a separate series, “Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell.” He didn’t much care for Captain America: The First Avenger because the first two minutes completely negated every single relationship that the following 2 hours set up. If we know how it’s going to end, why would we give a rip about what happens in between? We don’t. We didn’t. And when Cap shows up in present time at the end, he barely registers ANY emotion after having been gone 70 years and lost everybody close to him. Yeah…just not thrilled with Captain America: The First Avenger at all.
Ah, Kage, you are a man after my own heart.
Leave it to me in your will?
You write such good blogs! I love this! (My family had panel trucks and pick-ups with campers on the back, but I relate with the vans.) LOL!
Thank you for the kind words. The problem with vans is that your vision is way too limited. It bothers me. My mother won’t go back to driving one either, which I’m thankful for.