Nothing Wrong With An Old Car

I was talking to my daughter about how in the fall we may be getting a newer car for my wife and that her current car would become the kids’ car. Our 2001 Toyota Camry has about 150,000 miles on it and a few nicks, dings and dents. However, I think it would make a great car for my son and daughter. Then I realized that it is 11 years old and that’s even older than the cars I used to drive when I was a kid.

When I first had my license I thought our car was so old, and it was, compared to a lot of my friends. I got my license in 1978 and we had a 1968 Chevrolet Impala that had seen better days, but hey it got us around. Of course, I couldn’t just take it whenever I wanted. My older brothers all had their own cars, but my sister, who is a year older than me, and I both wanted to use it at various times. A year later, my younger brother got his license and there were three of us looking to use it. Luckily, my best friend Tony had his own car and the other member of our trio, Jeff, was usually able to use his father’s Caddy.

As my parents did with the other kids before me, when I first started driving and was able to use the car I had to run an errand or two for them before I could do what I wanted. So I’d pick up Tony and/or Jeff, go to the store for some milk or bread, bring it home and then I could go about my business. While it was a bit of a nuisance to have to do it, I figured it was worth the extra time so that I could get out of the house with my buddies, cruise through town, see people and be seen. There were just a few rules I had to follow: put gas in the car, no alcohol in the car and don’t be late. My parents were very big on being home on time. It was a responsibility and a respect thing and I didn’t want to break that trust.

There were a few little quirks about the car that I had to learn when I began going out on my own. One was that you couldn’t accelerate too quickly, especially starting from a complete stop. If you did, the car would bog down, sometimes stall out, and not go fast. That was kind of good for me because I didn’t take chances when pulling into traffic so I didn’t cut people off or have any accidents. Tony and Jeff used to tell me I drove like an old lady, but I was just being careful and taking into consideration the condition of the car. Probably related somehow to the same issue, you couldn’t take corners too quickly either, especially sharp turns, or the car could stall out on you. Before you think it was all bad with the ’68 Chevy, it wasn’t. When you took your time driving it ran pretty well. 

The quirkiness of the car will always have a special place in my heart because it actually saved me one time from getting a ticket and possibly losing my license. I didn’t have my full license yet, but had what was called a “pink slip”, which was like a probationary driver’s license. I was coming home from the other end of town and was going to be late if I didn’t get home quickly. I was going home on the main road, North Main Street, and was going about 50 mph in a 35 mph zone. It was dark so I didn’t notice the police car coming from the opposite direction until he was right next to me. I started to slow down, looked in the side mirror and noticed he was turning into a parking lot and was going to come back my way – I knew he was coming after me. I saw that he had to wait for traffic, which partially shielded me from his view, so I made a quick right turn onto the first street I could.

I’m sure you know where this is going. Because I turned so quickly the car stalled. I put it in neutral and tried to restart it but it just wouldn’t catch. I was losing speed so I quickly pulled over in front of the fourth or fifth house down, turned the lights off, jammed it into park and ducked down a bit so that I could see out the side mirror but couldn’t be seen from behind. My heart was pounding in my chest and I was starting to think of the trouble I would get in when my parents found out and how disappointed they would be. I figured I wouldn’t be able to drive again until I was 21.

Then I saw it, the police car at the end of the road slowing down and looking down the road. “Don’t come down here, don’t come down here”, I was saying out loud as I tried to will the cop to keep going. It felt like it was taking forever for him to decide if he was going to come down the street. I was starting to sweat and I think I even made one of those bargains with God that people make when they’ve done something stupid to get themselves in trouble. “God, if you let me get away this time, I WILL NEVER SPEED AGAIN! I PROMISE!” Much to my surprise, and relief, the police car did not turn down the street and kept going along the main road. I sat there for a moment to compose myself, figured out an alternate route home, turned the key and the car started up right away without a problem.

I somehow got home on time that night, my parents none the wiser and my bargain with God already forgotten. More importantly, I now had a great story to tell my friends, of how I had beaten the cops. Most of them thought it was because I had performed under pressure and outwitted the cops, but I knew it was all because our car would stall if you took a turn too quickly. From that night on I loved that old jalopy! 

So I think it will be OK if my kids use an 11-year-old car. It didn’t hurt me to use an older car and it actually saved me from trouble. The key for my kids will be to follow the rules of the road, especially the speed limit. Because unfortunately for them, if they’re trying to lose the cops, the Camry isn’t going to stall out if they take a turn too quickly. 

It Is What It Is

“It is what it is.”

I have heard people say that so many times that I think I will strangle the next person who says it, mostly because of the reason it is said. You can say “It is what it is” (abbreviated from now on as “IIWII”) and mean that this is how things are right now, many times through no fault of your own, but we’re going to look at things and see if we can make some changes and make them better. However, that’s not usually how it is meant. Instead, when most people say “IIWII” they are saying this is how it is now, we’re not going to try to figure it out or make things better, and it’s never going to change, so why bother. That’s what I hear the most.

This phrase gets tossed around a lot at work when we’re under the gun to get something done. We have a day or two to get a project completed, but the work is going to take twice that amount of time. When this fact gets brought to the attention of the powers-that-be, their response is usually “IIWII”. It doesn’t matter that this happens not just once in a while, but almost every project, because “IIWII”. That we could take a look at how we do projects, change how we estimate the length of time of tasks, or change the number of people assigned to a project don’t seem to be options.

Just think about the “IIWII” attitude for a moment. What if people in the past had had that attitude?

We’d still be reading by candlelight in our darkened homes because Thomas Edison would have never figured out how to make a light bulb work. I can just hear someone that was working with him saying, “Tom, don’t be ridiculous. You’ve tried so many times and nothing works. It is what it is.” There’d be no streetlights, no overhead lights, no lamps to read by, no lights of any kind.

We’d still be riding horses and bikes, or walking, to get around because Henry Ford would have never figured out how to mass produce an affordable vehicle. I don’t know, maybe that would be better in some ways. However, I watched enough westerns on Saturday afternoon and enough episodes of 

“Little House on the Prairie” to know that automobiles are a faster and more comfortable way to get around. After a few failures trying to build a vehicle, maybe his friends and partners told him “IIWII”.    

Advances in medicine, computers, cars, trains, planes, etc., never would have happened if the “IIWII” attitude prevailed. People would still think that Earth was the center of the universe and that it was flat. Not a pretty picture, is it? That’s why I can’t stand it when I’m given the “IIWII” attitude when it wouldn’t take much to change things to what it could be.

I’m glad my parents didn’t have that attitude when I was younger. First, they taught us to do the best we could do in everything, to aim high. That attitude taught us to seek excellence in what we did, not just go along with the status quo. Second, they taught us to question things, which helped us to identify where it was possible to make improvements. Third, they taught us that when we wanted something we needed to persevere. Let’s be real, most things that have any value only come with hard work. Probably most importantly, they taught us how to communicate with others in ways that don’t make them want to give us a smack upside the head. Sometimes how you present something is more important than what you’re saying, frustrating as that may be. They could have easily taken the easy way out and told us to just go along with whatever we were told, to never question anything, to strive for mediocrity so that if we didn’t reach our high goals we wouldn’t be disappointed, to give it a try or two and then forget about it, all in the name of “IIWII”. I’m so grateful they didn’t do that because I would not be the person I am today.

I think that instead of quietly getting ticked off, I’m going to have a new response for “IIWII”. I’m not going to just accept that response anymore without at least a quick discussion. In certain areas, I’m tired of the way things are and I won’t just go quietly. It may be that it is what it is, but it’s not what it could be. It could be better if we took a look and maybe made some changes. I think it’s worth the time and effort.

Paraprosdokians

A friend of mine at work, whose sense of humor is very similar to mine, sent me an email last week with the title, Paraprosdokian. I had no clue what that meant, but was in need of a bit of humor (as usual at work) so I read it. The email started with the definition of paraprosdokian: "Figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently used in a humorous situation." For example, “Where there's a will, I want to be in it.”

Well, I guess my brain is wired for paraprosdokians, because there are a lot of times that somebody says something or does something, or situations occur, that make me think of things like these. Thankfully, I don’t have Tourette’s Syndrome, so I don’t just blurt them out, but there are times I need to bite my tongue and stifle a laugh. There have been many times that I could have messed up my life more than it is by simply saying a few words, a paraprosdokian. 

Here are some of my favorites from the email:

Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

Maybe this is why my parents always told us to walk away from a fight if at all possible. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen intelligent people end up looking like a fool because they were goaded into temporary insanity by a master button pusher. Or a younger brother.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.

Well, at least it’s the “last thing” they want to do, but you definitely need to be open-minded and keep all options on the table. Just the threat of being hurt, maybe by an older brother, can keep you in line sometimes. You know the famous quote, “The only thing we need to fear, is fear itself”? Well, I can tell you from experience that you need to fear an older brother that you just goaded into an argument and who was then punished.

If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

Contrary to popular belief today, there is right and wrong. We are all wrong at one time or another– all of us. My parents taught me to stand up for what I believed and to not just go along with what someone else said, thought, or did. There are just times I cannot agree with something, especially if that would be the “politically correct” thing to do. Funny, though, that my older brothers thought our parents’ teaching in regard to not just going along with something should be suspended where they were involved. 

We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

How true. Watch little kids; they say and do whatever in public. Have an itch in a place that shouldn’t be scratched in public? No problem for a kid. Is that little booger just barely hanging on to your nose bugging you? They just pick it out…and then eat it. We, as adults, do some things, too, but first we make sure no one is looking. Or we make sure that we have enough time to escape without being identified after we pass some gas.

I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paychecks.

Back in the days when I was young and ambitious, I wanted to be the big guy. I wanted to be a leader, to manage people and processes, to be one of the few that the many looked to for direction, guidance and information. However, two things happened that changed my mind; I had kids and I actually became a manager. The kids helped me realize that my job was not as important as I thought it was. In the grand scheme of things it meant very little, especially compared to how much they loved me. Becoming a manager, and the extra hours at work that came with it, just reinforced that realization. Just give me a regular paycheck with enough money to take care of my family.

I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

Some people are fault-finders. They need to figure out whose fault it was that something did or did not happen. It can be a long, laborious process that can make you half crazy, trying to tie events together to make your case. I prefer to simply blame someone else. There’s no research, no investigation, no logical thinking. Blame-shifters live happier, less complicated lives than fault-finders.

A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.

We didn’t get away with much in my house. Somehow my parents usually knew when we were up to something. If we did happen to pull off a caper, they found out about it later. They could probably tell just by looking at us – we had the face of a guilty conscience. However, these days I realize that a fuzzy memory has nothing to do with my conscience and everything to do with getting older and the associated senior moments.

I love surprises, unexpected endings and humor – all the ingredients of a paraprosdokian. Life would just be too boring without them. Something small, like a humorous email at work, can change my day. A little laughter to break up the monotony is always welcome in my view. Besides, why do now what you can put off ‘til later?

I Got the Music In Me

I went to take a shower late Saturday afternoon and saw that my son had left an iPod dock in the bathroom. So I grabbed my iPod, plugged it in and cranked some tunes while I was taking a shower. I haven’t listened to music while in the shower in years and it made me feel happy and kind of like a kid again. Afterwards, I felt a little silly for getting a bit giddy from just listening to music while taking a shower and it sounds kind of stupid now that I’m writing it down, but music holds many memories for me.

A song can sometimes bring me right back to a place I was when I heard it the first time, or when something important happened in my life. Sometimes a song will simply remind me of a time when I was feeling down and it changed my mood or made me feel better. And yes, there are even songs that kind of bum me out a bit as I mentioned here. But I remember cranking up the tunes before I went out on a Saturday night, setting the mood for my evening. That’s what I was remembering while in the shower and it made me smile.

I’ve always loved music, even if I couldn’t play it. A few of my brothers played the drums, but I figured out fairly quick that I was not a drummer. I always liked the bass and the guitar, but I never was able to get one. I hung around with a few guys who played guitar and I’d pick it up some times, but I didn’t spend enough time on it. One friend taught me to play the first three notes of “Smoke on the Water”! That’s right, three notes was the extent of my guitar playing. 

Hopefully, it doesn’t seem from my other posts that my older siblings always gave me a hard time, because they didn’t. They actually taught me about a lot of good things growing up, especially music. I got to listen to a lot of good music when I was a kid, courtesy of my older brothers and sisters. We had just about all the Beatles albums, early Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, Grand Funk Railroad and a lot of others, too. I still remember the first record I bought; the single “Victoria” by The Kinks. I was definitely influenced by what they listened to. When I got to be a little older, like early teens, I wore out Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin II, The Who’s Tommy and Chicago’s Chicago Transit Authority. We had what I consider to be some of the best music of the 1960’s and early 1970’s. I still listen to a lot of classic rock today.

Today, I still want to learn how to play guitar. In the meantime I can listen to my kids, who are both incredible musicians and singers, and my wife who is an incredible singer, too. Or, I could just crank some classic rock tunes on my iPod. Even if it’s not Saturday night.