phantom

some of you have been in my car, affectionately and bad-assly named "Blue Steel". he's great. pretty reliable, some dents here and there with stories attached. most of those dents, especially one on the roof, are attributed to joe undem, a childhood friend of my brother and i. quite a large boy, the guy stood 6'3" 260 at the age of 14 and he decided it would be a great idea to relax on top of the car. poor thing, the car's roof didn't stand a chance- now it's a little concave.

but i digress.

my father used to drive this car. in fact, every time the car comes up in conversation now he has to reply with, "that's a great car" or "man i wish i could drive that car again." sucka.

anywho, because this was my father's car there wasn't a whole lot of music blaring from it in its past. the guy likes music, that's no lie, but he's not the one who opens all the windows and sings harmonies at the top of his lungs on the freeway. no no. instead, the volume on his stereo never went above levels three or four and the cd player never played burned cds. he never needed them, i suppose. because of that, i think the soul of the car got stuck on that volume level. i didn't realize this until i inherited the car.

not only is the seat worn down like an old couch due to my father's girth, the soul of the car is a phantom. sometimes the volume on the radio would go up, sometimes it would go down, and most of the time it took about 15 minutes to get the volume to the highest possible. whenever i got it to level 4 i would try as i might to keep it there. i wouldn't dare brush my arm past the knob, wouldn't think about turning it down, and NEVER, NEVER would i turn it off. if i did, i would have to make sure that the knob went straight back, or else the next time i turned it on there would be nothing. this turned into a needless stressor in my life, and i hated having to explain to newbies to my car that no, you can't change the volume, and no, you can't play burned cds. terrible.

the worst part is when someone would come into the car and try turn the stereo down i would stop everything and yell NO!!!!!! -now that's just not the way to treat a guest.

today i got a new car stereo. and even though it wasn't lil' wayne, i blasted my music nonetheless. no dog and pony show this time. just regular old white-kid john mayer.

ahhh......