By Nick Hayden
August 21, 2015
Taken / Pixabay
My first car was a 1982 Honda Accord. I called her Betsy. I only drove her a few years before the repair bills convinced me to buy a new car. At the end, the passenger door didn’t open from the outside, the rearview mirror wouldn’t stay in place, and I had the habit of stalling out on any journey more than two or three miles.
I loved that car. It was mine. I listened to a lot of good music in that car. I even wrote a story featuring it and an incident involving a gas station and something like fire bursting from somewhere beneath my car. There was this thing called the Star Wars trilogy back then (maybe you’ve heard of it), and I liked to think of Betsy as my Millenium Falcon.
Fast forward to 2015. I’m driving a 2000 Volkswagon Beetle. I still think of it as my “new” car. It has the floor mats from my Accord that read “Betsy,” ’cause it’s Betsy 2.0. Problem is, it’s starting to resemble my old car quite a bit. The windows won’t roll down–or if they do, they won’t roll up. It makes an ominous chk-chk-chk when I turn the key. The ceiling fabric is sagging, my parking brake barely works, and I’ve been stranded twice in the last month.
But here’s the thing. I don’t want to get a new car. I like my car. It’s not old. It hasn’t aged a day. (And neither have I.)
What is this thing with Time, that keeps moving along?
I find the same thing happening with stories. I’ll start one, then suddenly it’s five years later and I’m like, “Wait, I’ve been working on this for that long? And why doesn’t it seem as bright and shiny as before?” Ideas seem ageless–and then you realize that cool world you mean to write about first came to you when you were a teenager and now you have two kids in school. Or, on the flip side, sometimes you re-read an old story that is grossly incompetent, but you still have a certain fondness for it no one else could possibly understand because you can see the sparkle of the idea that drove you (see what I did there?) to write it.
Moral of the story? No idea. Except I’ve come up with a lot of great stories while driving around, so I’ll keep driving and I’ll keep writing and I’ll keep making strained metaphors whenever the blog deadline comes due too soon.
Okay, I’m off. Time to head home. As long as my car starts….
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