Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name.
Being a “Cheers” junkie in my more formative years, that saying was one of the first of life’s truths I acquired. How can something that profound in such a catchy theme song ever lead someone astray?
Heck, how could anything on television be bad?
Later, I discovered that not everything I saw on television was good. It was a hard lesson learned, when – under the influence of Pixie Stix, The Learning Channel and “Macgyver” – I attempted to give myself a breast implant using nothing but a Whoopie Cushion and a Taco Bell spork.
So here I am today, with a scar on my chest that all the chicks dig (or at least they would if they’d ever let me take my shirt off around them) and a philosophy based on a line from a long-ago canceled sitcom.
See, my life is full of anonymity if nothing else. I am Average Joe– average height, brown hair, brown eyes, body like a Greek god (or is it “body like Elmer Fudd?” I forget). I’m the guy you might vaguely recognize from somewhere, but more likely you’ll meet me two or three times and not even know it. I should work for the CIA.
I would be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy my low-key lifestyle. The fewer people that remember me, the fewer names and faces I have to remember. But, you know, sometimes even I wanna go where everybody knows my name.
I would prefer, however, that the place not be the car repair shop.
The man behind the counter was the first sign that my on again-off again relationship with my car was about to permanently end. I walked through the front door of a local automotive dealership and the employee began drooling like he was Pavlov’s dog and I was a 5-foot-9 dinner bell. There is no mistaking the look of a man who knows that he won’t be scrounging for groceries anytime soon.
“Yeeeeeeeessssssss?” he asked, toeing the line of enthusiasm between a professional’s love for his job and the sudden impulse to start singing the Chili’s baby back ribs song.
“Um, well,” I replied. “My car is doing this thing where it acts like the brakes are going to work, but then they don’t, and then they do really well and I get whiplash.”
The man punched a couple of keys on his computer then looked up at me.
“Alright, Seth, we’ll give you a call after we take a look at it.”
Alright, Seth, he says. No “what’s your name?” or “what’s your phone number?” or “what kind of car is it?”
For the record, it’s a gray (my friends say it’s purple) 1993 Pontiac Grand Am with just fewer than 188,000 miles on it. I never figured getting rid of something I despise with every shred of my being would be so difficult. It’s like taking a shower because you know you need to, despite the fact that the underwear you’ve had on for two weeks are really, really comfortable.
I guess I’ve been under the assumption that I’d always be driving that car. Of course, I also assumed it would always have four hubcaps. I got the Gray Grand Am (when it’s broken its alter-ego is the Purple Grand Ain’t) in early 1998 as a graduation gift and we have been through a lot.
Let’s see: countless brake jobs, four or five batteries, two starters, an alternator, a radiator hose, something that has to do with keeping the car’s computer from blowing up, a transmission (which led to a very uncomfortable bus ride across Idaho), two sets of air conditioner knobs, and something called a catalytic converter, which sounds like something that would be more useful in an operating room for a sex change.
This weekend will be the end of my five-year run with the Gray Grand Am. I’ll miss the bad times: the span of two weeks when I couldn’t come to a complete stop without it dying (I don’t even want to know the number of laws I broke in the name of getting home without the aid of a tow truck). And I’ll miss the good: watching half of a hubcap roll gracefully down River Road as I was singing along to a tape player that didn’t work.
So when you see me roll into the parking lot next week and I actually go through the trouble of locking my new car, one thought is sure to pop into your mind: “Hey, don’t I know that guy?”