"That Is Because You Crazy"

I know it's silly, but I feel bad for Harold.
I haven't seen the new addition to the household yet--Eva believes it's a girl--but I did turn in my key to Harold this morning and I have the car a little pat on the rump as I went off to work.

I'm not going to tell you I'm crying over this car. If I was still a child, though, I would be.

I don't know how old I was when I accompanied my dad--I think it was just my dad--to the junker's. Too young to remember why we were there, but old enough to go exploring. I found something deeply, deeply disturbing about the smashed up cars there. Cars missing doors, cars with shattered dashboards, one car with a steering wheel embedded in  a seat...I couldn't shut off my imagination, much as I wanted to. And then I ducked into one particularly well bashed in vehicle and  found a colouring book on the floor.  The implications of that took a while to filter into my brain, and once they did, I was an emotional wreck. From that day forward I wanted nothing to do with junked cars. It took some cajoling, not to mention a rearrangement of my brain, to get me to go with Eva to a demotlition derby years ago; truth be told I'm still not all that comfortable with the idea of cars being smunched. My adult brain knows that there is no other purpose for these things anymore, and further that cars are inanimate objects that have no feelings; my inner five year old claps his hands over his ears and yells "don't care!" And now I imagine our 2003 Echo, which always has been and still is a good car, is headed off to get disembowelled. Maybe his frame will sit in some junkyard, rotting. I rather hope he's recycled, that parts of him will emerge in a new, even gayer car.

At least Harold isn't a 1984 Plymouth Horizon...