Week 32: '67 Pontiac Firebird 400

I had a strange thing happen to me today.

I picked up my son from preschool, and turning out of the parking I remembered pulling out of the parking lot at my high school as part of driving lessons.

You have to understand: "remembered" does not do justice to this experience. This memory was suddenly, completely, absolutely there, after 32 years, like Luke Skywalker absolutely yet unexpectedly seeing a hologram of Princess Leia asking for Obi Wan's help -- one moment, he's messing with a droid, the next he's seeing a little lady. Except my experience was not miniaturized (and it is my wife who has the Droid [phone]).*

The feel of the steering wheel, the nervousness and excitement I had experience, the unfamiliar tension of the wheel as it turned, the actual emotions of being 16, clicked on and lighted up my mind, not gradual like a compact fluorescent but immediate like an old-school incandescent.

I do not know what triggered the memory.

I didn't even know my noggin had retained that memory.

Listen, I have no idea.

Today's picture is a muscle car from days of youthful yore, the kind of car that was much more common on the roads when I was learning to drive, the kind of car on which we all wanted to learn to drive, the kind of car I might have even seen in the school parking lot.

From days when the term "burnout" was a 50/50 split between setting tires spinning and someone who probably wouldn't finish school but was too mellow to care. (I understand "burnout" is still used for both, but when I was in school, it was part of the everyday lexicon.)

From days when a 1967 Pontiac was classic, but not yet "classic," as it was only 12 years old.

While I miss the cars, I do not miss those days -- they weren't full of fond memories -- but something nonetheless triggered that driving school memory completely independent of good or bad, completely independent of willful nostalgia. The return to driving school lasted for a good 10 to 12 seconds and then was gone.

Leaving a trail of smoke from the tires as it drifted away back into the past.




*As terrible as the Droid joke is, I thankfully scratched the reprise of "little lady" to refer to my wife, which even I could not do.


Smokin' Pontiac Firebird photo courtesy of Phil Pekarcik.


Car part of the Hot Wheels 2010 New Models collection.