An awful friend

 I think we have all at some point realized that we have made the wrong friend or are in a relationship that just isn't complementing who we are. They are usually the one that is fun to be with but leads you down a path you regret. Some shed this friend in one quick termination like ripping a bandaid from a furry patch of skin, others let them just drift silently away and swear they lost your number. This friend for me is Alcohol.

We met when I was 13, in the form of Strawberry Daiquiris from a punch bowl at a a neighbors Crystal party. I rode my mini bike home across the field with a warm buzz and my mother running behind me screaming in terror. We didn't dance again until I was 15. I was at a friends for sleepover where we snuck out to a party in the woods with a bonfire and a keg. Some of my Dads students were all to happy to help me celebrate. Keg stands seemed easy then. When I was 17 I passed out behind the wheel of my Prelude after combining a fifth of Monarch and some Sunny D. I rolled the car end for end across my PE teacher's driveway a mile and a half from home. ALWAYS wear your seatbelt.  A family friend helped scrape my belongings from the street and called my father to come rescue me. I wonder if he knows how grateful I am to this day for his help.

The bad decisions continued all through my twenties and who knows how many guardian angles. I shake my head in horror walking down this blurry memory lane of shame to write this. You will never know how thankful and blessed I feel that no innocents had to pay for those decisions. I've watched my Mom's side of the family be torn apart and crippled by the last 30 years being poured over the rocks or squeezed out of a grape. My last relationship came to an ugly end, and looking back I see that the worst of the fights usually involved that old "Friend" and that alcohol hasn't brought me joy or cheer, usually just tears and a headache. The last three times I've been out to the bar with him I didn't have more fun, and I'm usually sad as I watch great people reduced to sloppy copies of themselves.

If your'e not enjoying the journey, change the direction you're headed.

And please don't take this as preachy piece of judgement, this isn't about you. This is just me realizing who my friends really are.

Number 40?

I've always found it strange when someone has the same car for years, I mean I get the appeal, financial stability and well some cars just fit you so well you make a bond and they become family. I've only been in car love a twice. My first car, a 1979 Saab 900 GLi.

It was my Grandfather's car that I bought from him with money I made fishing in Alaska. I was 15, and one night I snuck the car out at the adult acting age of 15 with a friend to drive around the Island. We ended up jumping the car 127ft through the air before doing 360's spins for a 1/4 of a mile and coming to rest backwards in a ditch. My Father made me fix the car and drive it for the next two years. I miss it's airplane cockpit cabin and ignition down on the floor and the way it's odd egg shaped silhouette would swallow three bales of hay, but not the way it flew. I'm suspicious of it's Airplane heritage the way it fell nose first from the sky.

I can still remember the smell of that car, like it always had a fuel leak, and the disconnected feel of the shifter and every time I see one of those quirky Swedes I melt.

I traded the Saab to a Croatian man for a 1967 Lincoln Continental Coupe that had been sitting in a barn for twenty years.

There was so much dust and chicken crap on the car you could barely tell the car was white. The first time I sat in her she felt like home. Much what I imagine Arnold felt like in the movie Christine when he slid behind the wheel of that haunted 57 Fury. Instead of the scent old Chrysler Vinyl, I  was greeted with a musty waft of hand worked leather seats and and one of my favorite examples of functional automotive art.

I spent the next month making the road worthy and had the car for twelve years. The liquid torque that she had and the way she would glide past 100 mph like a supersonic sofa, the Concorde had nothing on her. Bad decisions and my twenties made me abandon the car and my dreams of being buried in it. 

I had one more Saab, and two more Lincoln's and well, maybe about 38 other cars from almost every other brand except Nissan, but none have made a home in my heart yet like those two. My daily commute has me back in American Eco Luxury by the name of a carefree plastic West Coast Haven... Malibu. Sexy and sinister, like the Bat mobile Sans Balls.

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