Early Thoughts

So it's a gray New York morning, and I just watched this nice Bronx man tow my little car away. I donated her to a place called Outreach.

I don't need the car. I walk everywhere--or I take public transportation. That's actually one of my favorite aspects of this place.

Still, I am sad. Driving a car is such a Southern thing. My teenage years in Alabama are mostly filled with memories of open windows, loud music (almost always loud U2), and stick shifts.

Top Ten Favorite Car Memories:

1) The long hot Summer Saturday we spent driving around Huntsville with the T-Tops off--looking forward to an outside presentation of "Rattle and Hum" on Monte Sano.
2) Leaning out of Lisa's passenger side window as we cruised through Jones Valley Farm.
3) Racing Erik down Carl T. Jones and trying to explain the resulting smoking brakes to my mother as some sort of radiator output.
4) Making out with Jeff on the way to Metro practice. We were ALWAYS an hour late.
5) The "last first kiss" with Taylor in the parking lot of the University of Alabama library.
6) En route to some random party, laughing with Britt after she spilled a huge cup of Manishewitz on herself and said "You get me drunk, you get me wet, and you never do anything I wanna do!"
7) The drive to Fairhope.
8) We were chatting about something inane, admiring the moon and the quiet North Carolina night and then... A sort-of-rough and long-desired kiss up against the car in Winston-Salem.
9) Listening to poetry in the passenger seat on some random road in Hyde Park.
10) E! Pushing the car (BY HERSELF) out of sand in Port Aransas.

Bye bye, little polluter of the earth. I gotta go. I gotta catch the bus.