Case in point: a week ago, thanks to the record-setting stock market (Bidenomics bitch!), I was able to sell some shares and treat myself to my first brand new car in seventeen years. German car, expensive to maintain, expensive to repair, ridiculously expensive to own.
What the hell. I'm not taking it with me. And as the wife said, "Life is short. Buy the car."
The point is in purchasing my new wheels, I have to let go of my old ones, a fourteen-year old Lexus ES350 with over 155,000 miles on it. While I was initially thrilled at jettisoning the Lexus, I started thinking about all the times of my life that car has been a part of.
Driving the kids to school.
To rehearsals.
To game practice.
Nights out with the wife.
Emergency trips to urgent care or the ER. Fortunately not many of those.
I'm not gonna lie: thinking about the outgoing car in that light got me more than a little misty. It shouldn't come as a surprise. If you know anything about me, and if you don't by now then I just don't know where we go from here, you know I'm a sap.
I cry at Hallmark commercials. I never had a chance.
Because I have a new car, and a new windshield, I also have to say goodbye to something else I've been holding onto for the last two cars I've owned. My Chiat/Day parking sticker.
I always loved the Chiat sticker. The pirate culture it represented. The skull and crossbones shadow it made at high noon on the dash. The bragging rights it gave me. And the fact I could visit Chiat weeks after I was done freelancing there, park unnoticed amongst them, and sneak upstairs for one of their great breakfast burritos from the in-house restaurant.
I'm not proud. But on a stack of bibles, it was a pretty fuckin' great burrito.
When I was still working at agencies, before finding the most awesome client side job ever, that little blue sticker was also proof positive, tangible evidence, something I could point to whenever I'd play the Chiat card.
Which almost everyone who works or worked there does at one time or another.
The sticker's faded now, and years of sunlight exposure have given it a little curling around the edges. And just like the velcro strips that hold my FasTrak transponder, or the Magic Castle member parking discount sticker, the time has come to lower the pirate flag, and let go of the Chiat sticker.
All to say that if you want to sneak in for a breakfast burrito, we're going to have to take your car.
