Heather and I were driving home tonight after her doctor’s appointment. It had been a long day of taking the train into Philly, sitting in the doctor’s office from The View all the way through the end of All My Children and then rushing back to 30th Street Station, only to miss the train by a minute. We’d run down the platform shouting at the conductor, our long overdue Taco Bell lunches in hand, until she gave us a wry grin, shook her head, and hollered back “Sorry, you’ll have to catch the next train to Harrisburg”.
Great, only another 90 minutes to wait. I sat and people-watched at the station while Heather slept against me. I sat for a while and watched the condensation collect and drip down the sides of my soda. We waited and waited and waited. Waited for the train to board. Waited for the train to go. Waited for the train to finally get to Harrisburg.
Finally at the end of the longest 10 mile drive home from the train station, we were stopped at a light to pull down the street into our development and we sat behind a guy in this 20-year old Bimmer convertible. It looked like one of those vials the lead for mechanical pencils come in, not curved and sleek. The guy behind the wheel had a bald spot that reflected back pink from the red traffic light above him. So I looked closer at him to try and guess his age. His ears were sagging and the skin behind it was starting to wrinkle just a little. He gesticulated wildly in the air and yelled into his cellphone; a gun-metal-gray cellphone the size of a loaf of Wonder Bread. His black Members Only jacket matched his Bimmer. I closed my eyes for a moment and heard strains of “Boys of Summer” running through my head.
I laughed when I pointed him out to Heather and I’m still giggling a little bit, I feel a lot of empathy for that man. He was having a great time, in this late summer day, and not hurting anyone. I thought about if for a moment, but I don’t know why he’d not grown with the times. Maybe he just enjoyed the 80’s that much that he didn’t want to move on. Sometimes it feels nice to go back to the times when that stuff was new and dazzling. Or maybe he just drove through some rip in the time-space continuum, and he was on his way to see Dr. Emmett Brown or Buckaroo Banzai before all hell broke loose. Either way, I wish him good luck and Godspeed.
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