Wishes and buts

September 30, 2006 at 12:20 am (Uncategorized)

It happens every spring. The birds are out and the grass is turning green. Scantily clad women are washing cars and the last of the snowbanks have died screaming wet deaths. I’ve got the fever. I know what I want and nothing can stop me from getting it. Yet year after year, in spite of the craving that consumes me like fever, decades of springtimes have passed and I still don’t have a goddamn motorcycle.

I mean it. Every year when the mud dries and the pot holes have been fixed, I start looking around at the gleaming bikes and their deliriously happy riders. And every year, spring fades to summer and summer to fall and I’m still driving a machine with a roof, four wheels and doors.

For many years, I was just way, way too reckless to have a bike. I had the fever, but I was also smart enough to know that it was laced with immaturity and a tendancy to do the wrong thing. Who wants to get scraped off a curb and be forever known as the guy whose leg took three hours to find?

After that it was just not finanically practical. Then it wasn’t practical for other reasons. Now in the spring, I just go to the department stores and sit on the little toy motorcycles out front. A quarter buys me a minute of back and forth action and when I make vroom noises, I can almost feel the wind in my hair. Then the security guy comes and he’s a real dink about it. That bastard probably never got a puppy when he was a kid and that’s why he’s so mean.

So, I dedicate this space to all the things we’ve desired but never obtained. A pony, a model airplane, a real airplane. A ventriloquist puppet, a treehouse, a unicycle. A hot tub, a trophy wife, a bottle of Chateux Lafite. There’s always next year, my friends. Keep rubbing the genie bottle and maybe Barbara Eden will appear.

And while I’m at it, wasn’t Major Nelson an absolute moron?