The End of An Era

As the Andy Bernard character in The Office said, “I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.”

***WARNING: This column is NOT about politics or policy.***

My kids hate her. They’ve been wishing for her demise for as long as I can remember. My oldest did a bit of damage to her side when she failed to see a brick mailbox at night. My middle largely escaped having to drive her once she got her license. My youngest is delighted she has reached the end of the line, as he will not be forced like his older sisters to learn how to drive on her. All they see is an old, beat up minivan with coffee stains on the floor mats, crud in the crevices, and tech they deem "ghetto.”

The she, here, is my 2004 Honda Odyssey with just under 218,000 miles. I call her Red Car. We bought Red Car brand new on January 31, 2004, in Littleton, Colorado, when my now ex-wife was four months pregnant with my middle kid and my oldest was two-years-old when I worked for Colorado Governor Bill Owens (the last Republican one). Red Car crossed the country when we moved to Virginia when I went to work for President George W. Bush. She then came to Ohio in late 2006 when we opted to escape the madness of Washington, D.C. When my marriage imploded in 2017, I gladly kept Red Car in the division of marital assets. Loyalty should be rewarded, you know? As I like to say, Red Car was with me longer than the ex-wife and thank God for that.

Earlier this week, Red Car started to make odds sounds, so I popped open the hood to see what was wrong. She has a leak in the power steering system. The repair will cost $1,300. She is worth $400. The math just doesn’t work. If I could get a guarantee out of her that no other system will start to fail, I’d probably get her fixed, but, at twenty-one+ years old, it is just a matter of time before other parts go bad. Thus, I’ve reached the end of an era with Red Car. I’ve contacted a school to see if they would take her so the kids studying to be auto mechanics can learn by taking her apart.

When I see Red Car, I don’t see what she looks like or how she drives. I look in the rear view mirror and see over twenty-one years of my kids’ lives. I hear their little voices. I see them when they were still in car seats. I fondly remember all of the drives we took in Red Car. More drives to and from soccer, volleyball, rowing, gymnastics, baseball, basketball, and swimming practices than possible to count. Hilton Head too many times to remember. The Hillbilly Road Tour all around the American South. Dozens of soccer and volleyball games and tournaments all over the country. Countless rides over to Dayton to walk around the National Air Force Museum and grab Marion’s Pizza. And, yes, those fifty hours of required driving with the two older kids teaching them to drive, which in many ways became the last long rides we took together before they gained their driving independence…drives where we talked about anything and everything. I can’t tell you how much I wanted Red Car to last at least until my son learned to drive so he and I could do those drives and have those talks in her.

Boy, if cars could talk...

The tech they make fun of happens to be my Father’s Day gift from 2006 before my youngest was even born. It is an XM SKYFI2 satellite radio receiver that came with a lifetime membership, which SiriusXM no longer offers. As long as it kept working, I still used it to listen to The Highway and the 1980s channels to and from grabbing groceries, coffee, and post office errands. I’ve long since gotten my money’s worth from SiruisXM. Thankfully, I have a device that allows me to connect it to a non-car radio, so I can keep using it at home until it, too, goes kerplunk-kerplooey.

Too often today in our instant gratification society, old, dusty things get tossed aside for new, shiny things when the old, dusty things still work perfectly fine. Everyone wants the newest smartphones, trendiest clothes, and fanciest cars. I live in an affluent city where Red Car is an aberration given that the average age of cars in America is 12.6 years, which she surpassed nearly a decade ago. Hell, I’m an aberration in Dublin. I’ve never fit in here. I’m sure my neighbors wonder why I still have her. They probably think I have money problems because I also drive a 2015 Honda Pilot that also was part of my division of marital assets and I added a 1994 Saab 900 last October, which I love love love. I’ll drove both of those cars for as long as I can.

Funny story though about driving that old beat-up Red Car in Dublin. There is a family who struggles financially to live in Dublin and keep up with the Joneses. One day, the mom shared with a mutual friend that her kids felt less self-conscious about driving the older car they drive because “Coach Mayer drives an even older car—like maybe the oldest car in Dublin!,” which made them all laugh. I love the anecdote. I’ve tried my best to teach my own kids that the “stuff” around you just doesn’t matter in the big picture. Newer gadgets will come out. Trendier clothes will replace the current fad. Keeping up with the Joneses will only lead to misery because somebody will always have more stuff (and, as the data shows, more debt and less net worth).

Look, I know Red Car is just a car. Yet, Red Car’s demise feels like it signifies something bigger. With just four years to go until my youngest kid heads off to college, the era of me being a kid dad is coming to end, too. Statistics indicate that once our kids head to college at 18-years-old, the sum total of our time with them until the end of our lives amounts to about one year. 365 days. That is it. I think that is why I wish the Red Car era, like my kid dad era, would last a bit longer. As the Andy Bernard character in The Office said, “I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.” Amen, Andy, amen.