Friday, January 4, 2008

Rest in Peace, my friends

Stanley has passed away.

In order to bring proper closure to the situation, I would like to take this opportunity to eulogize not only Stan, but his predecessors as well.

Barney was with me for two years. He was my first car and we were great friends. I named him Barney because although he had, in a past life, been a Sheriff's vehicle, he had a disturbing tendency to shoot himself in the foot. (Or the tire, as it were.) I paid five hundred dollars for him. Oh, how I miss Barney. Barney could go 130 mph without even thinking about it, despite the fact that he had 225,000 miles on him when he came into my life. The driver-side window was held up with a ruler, and there was no inside door panel. (This was so that if I decided to put the window down, I could pull it back up again.) One night, in a fit of rage, I crawled under the car and ripped off the decrepit exhaust pipe with my bare hands. In my defense, said exhaust had been dragging along the asphalt from downtown Cleveland all the way to Brooklyn, shooting out sparks and attracting all manner of unwanted attention from police officers. Over the course of his last few months with me, Barney's power steering began to fail. While this did afford me fantastic guns after a few weeks, I decided I needed to procure a more sound vehicle for my move to Virginia. Rest in peace, friend.

Around this time, my best friend was moving to Florida and needed somebody to take his car off of his hands. Enter Marilyn. Named thus due to my buddy's great love for Marilyn Monroe. We agreed on the small price of four hundred dollars, to be paid off in installments. A week after I took Marilyn into my custody, her brake lines broke. My friend, whom I had only paid twenty dollars so far, told me to forget paying him. So I paid twenty dollars for her and got the brakes fixed. Needless to say, Marilyn and I were not close. I think she resented me. She did not go anywhere quickly, and she did get me to Virginia, but only just. During the last hundred miles of the trip, Marilyn decided she was not happy and her transmission seal melted. She sat parked in my aunt's yard for five months until I moved back to Ohio, at which point a junk man came and took her away, paying me forty dollars. I was pleased to see the last of her and to double my investment. Rest in pieces, my friend.

Soon after moving back to Ohio, I came to the conclusion that if I continued to take the bus to work my toes would eventually freeze off. On the side of the road one day I saw a "for sale" sign in the window of a hulking, blue monster of a conversion van. The price was given at seven hundred dollars, but with cunning and wit I talked them down to four hundred. That day I took Sully home. I named him after the John Goodman character in Monsters, Inc. and felt that the name was appropriate. Shortly after acquiring Sully, I ran into another car with him. Then I did it again. And then again. I decided that instead of actually driving Sully, I should start leaving him at the rapid station and take the train to work. Sully got 13 miles to the gallon and did not move faster than 55 mph, and even then he complained. His gas gauge was broken and I ran out of gas more often than I had it. For all his faults, though, Sully was my savior. During a brief period of being "between homes", Sully kept me warm and safe during Ohio's most unforgiving month. Sully left me one day in September, when I was taken to people jail and he was taken to car jail. It was all a misunderstanding, but once it was all settled it came to my attention that it would cost more to bail Sully out than he had cost me originally. He may still be there to this day. Farewell, my friend, and good luck.

Stanley came into my life late last summer. I paid one thousand dollars for him; more than all of my other friends combined. He's a cute little thing, with a removable hard top for easy transportation of any friends who feel like pretending they're in a high school 80's movie. Stanley was my first manual transmission, got great gas mileage, and was cheerful for the most part, except in the mornings. (I was okay with this as I am not a morning person either.) He got his name from a friend, who decided he "Just looks like a Stanley." Tragically, on Christmas Eve, in the middle of a work errand, poor Stan suffered sudden engine failure. Singing "Another One Bites The Dust" as a friendly police officer pushed me over to the side of the road, I called a tow truck and brought him home for a proper burial. We have not yet decided how to dispose of him. I'm still in shock over his passing. We had so little time together, but I feel that there was so much potential there.

R.I.P. Stanley. You shall be missed.

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