Sometimes Life Is Like Owning A Pink AMX

Friends,

It’s been a very long time since I’ve posted up an update here and a lot has happened since the last post. Some very grim things and some lightly happy things that don’t seem to balance out the very grim things. I want to think that this is just a function of getting older, but we’re still (!!!) in a pandemic and there are studies that prove that politics is still to blame for a lot of deaths. Americans should be furious. I know I am.

When I was a tot, my best friend Jim and I were inseperable. We ran around and played and got into trouble and ate wheat paste and made each other laugh during catechism classes. We grew apart as we got older, but kept in touch infrequently. The last time I saw him was during his last month on this earth as he succumbed to the cancer that destroyed his burly frame, but never diminished his kindness and sweet demeanor. The party was for his parents’ wedding anniversary, but it really was for him. We hugged and he winced as I hugged his pain medication packs into his aching back. He was tired. He knew why we were there and seemed happy to see us.

I would like to take this moment to mention: Fuck cancer.

Jim’s sister is not a medical doctor, but she’s “done her research” on Facebook and convinced her parents that they shouldn’t be vaccinated against COVID-19. She told my Mom that she’s “very happy” that her parents hadn’t fallen for the constant barrage of media insisting they get the vaccine. They’re in their 80s, but worried about the vaccine’s long term effects. Jim’s father, one of the kindest men I’ve ever met, just died of COVID. I wonder if Jim’s sister is still so happy. At least we know he won’t have to deal with the long term effects of the vaccine.

I know a fellow who has a medical condition that prevented him from getting vaccinated. Too risky. He’s a sherrif’s deputy, one of our first responders who has risked his life saving others. He’s now a COVID long-hauler. Part of the reason we were supposed to get vaccinated early was to protect people like him. Folks whose immune systems put them most in harm’s way, like they weren’t already in harm’s way from the other stuff like bullets and blood and explosions.

If you’re like me (and may your omnipotent invisible friend help you if you are), you have a certain affinity for Roy Chapin Jr.’s AMC. It was scrappy, brash, and in big trouble. They were punching above their weight and taking shots at GM and Ford, who could do no wrong in the late 1960s. This was the era of the Matador coupe, Javelin, and the mighty AMX.

Now let’s pretend that it’s a half century later and you own a pink AMX. Maybe not that pink AMX, but it still garners the same attention and you still have to explain it. Why are you driving a pink AMX? Where did you get that pink AMX? Is it that pink AMX? And more recently, what’s an AMX?

Sometimes life is like that. Frustrating. Not simple. Not obvious.