Goodbye, old friend.

My dad took these pictures yesterday after he sold our 12 year-old mini-van. It kind of feels like we just sent a cranky, half-there uncle to a home with no visiting hours. 

If sentiment weren't a factor, we wouldn't miss the old guy. Though its exterior survived relatively unscratched, the van's age was obvious to anyone lucky enough to be a passenger. By year six, among its numerous charms, the van boasted a broken radio and a ride so turbulent that we kids nick-named it "Rickety."

More recently, however, my dad—out of some unexplained sense of solidarity—has insisted on calling him "Ricky."

Despite our many disputes regarding the correct nomenclature, one designation we could all agree on was that the van was undeniably "the Bailey car."

Goodbye, Rickety.

...or as my dad put it,

Golden Memories and Platinum Prophecies

As a member of the lower school community service club, I spent my Friday lunch periods in seventh and eighth grade socializing with the residents of Mount Pleasant, a nursing home located five minutes from my school.

Despite the frequency of my visits, breaking the ice was always nerve-racking for me. Conversation was a gamble. I never knew whether the people at my table would even want to talk, and during conversations I feared I’d stumble into an awkward or painful subject.

During one memorable visit, I greeted the woman to my left by asking her whether she was enjoying the nice spring weather we'd been having.

Without lifting her eyes from the untouched fish in front of her, she sighed and said,

“I’m just waiting for the day they tell me I can leave this place.”

Still optimistic, I tried to rebound by asking her what her favorite season was.

This question prompted the woman to look up from her plate and stare at me, perhaps to verify that she was not speaking to a four-year-old. The look she gave me indicated that now she was waiting for someone to tell her that at least I would leave soon.

Slightly discouraged, I turned to the man on my right and asked him whether he was enjoying his lunch. The topic seemed safe enough, considering he was licking some stray breadcrumbs stuck to the back of his fork.

“I remember you,” he said with a smile.

“You’re Jewish. We talked a couple of weeks ago.”

This was the first time someone at Mount Pleasant remembered me, or at least thought they did, and I didn't want to contradict him.

After all, I was an eighth grader whose social life was experienced vicariously through the characters of TGIF sitcoms. The idea of getting to be someone else, even if only through the eyes of a bald octogenarian, had its appeal. So I murmured an "uh huh," and made sure that my gold cross necklace was tucked underneath my shirt.

When asked, I told him honestly that no, I had not had my bat mitzvah yet. I felt guilty that he was making such an effort to remember things about the girl he thought I was, so I shifted the focus of the conversation onto him.

Soon, he was telling me about how different life was when he was growing up. Some of his friends had faced a lot of discrimination.

"One man was a Jew, such as yourself.”

He leaned in as he said this and gestured toward me with his open palm.

"Yes, jewish..." I dopily replied, bobbing my head.

However, he went on to tell me, his true passion was dancing. Deep wrinkles formed in his cheeks as he asked me whether I knew who Ann Miller was. Not wanting to disappoint him, I told him that her name sounded familiar.

“I danced with her,” he told me proudly.

Once I had learned a little more about Ann Miller, I was able to appreciate the significance of that man's treasured memory.
Dancing was what he loved most, and he was able to do it with one of the best dancers of his time.

My own life isn't devoid of celebrity encounters: I've shaken hands with Jimmy Carter. My friend's aunt was a bond girl. Heck, once I hung out with two kids from ZOOM.

I've flaunted all of these encounters before, but I aspire to have my own "Ann Miller" experience, something I'll still be bragging about sixty years from now.

I can picture myself as an eighty-two year-old somewhere like "Space Mount Pleasant," talking to a nice catholic boy who visits me weekly. I'll admire his yamaka as I ask him if he's ever heard of William Hung. He'll lie and tell me that he thinks the name rings a bell, and I'll boast that we once sang a karaoke duet together.

Then, drifting away from reality, I'll smugly reflect on my proudest memories. Lost in my thoughts, I'll lift my glass of prune juice and say with sincerest gratitude,

"L'Chaim."

Do you hear what I hear?

said the shepherd Boy to the mighty King

'Teen buzz,' aka 'the mosquito ringtone,' is a high-pitched sound effect that teenagers can use on their cell phones to alert them of incoming calls and texts. Young ears are able to detect the ringtone while the high-frequency noise usually goes unnoticed by their adult teachers and parents. However, this is not the alarm's only purpose. In fact, it was originally used by a store in Britain to ward off teenage loiterers.


Over breakfast the other day, my father and I reminisced about a family dinner a couple years ago during which he had told us about the invention and played a clip (similar to the one above) that featured the sound. All the kids heard it right away. My mother, who is already hard of hearing, shook her head unsurprised: she heard nothing. My dad squinted his eyes and tried to tune in, to no avail.

The mosquito ringtone seems to me like a high-tech version of the bell from The Polar Express. As we shift from adolescence to adulthood, the peal weakens with each additional year, until one day we don't hear it at all.

Soon we are middle-aged and resentful of teenagers, who linger around like they have nothing better to do with their young healthy legs.

"Not on our watch," we spitefully say,
and turn up the volume, repelling the pubescent pests with a silent roar.

Then we watch the youths scatter away, pesky little reminders of our past-selves and the vitality that time continues to suck from our bodies.