Topic: Car(s)

Author: Chris Dunn

“Mr. Dunn, name a car.”

Doris the Dodge Dart. A ’65 Mustang. The Bandit’s Trans Am.

“You mean to say you can’t think of a single car?”

A Woodie station wagon. The DeLorean. A dirty white van covered in rust spots…

“Seriously? Not one?”

I could see what Mr. Carey was doing. He was trying to make a point about description in writing, that simply saying, “the man drove a car” wasn’t sufficient, because everyone thinks of a different car – or, in my case, several different cars – but I was mute. Nothing would come out of my mouth. His terrifyingly intimidating eyes did nothing to help draw the images in my brain to my lips. What if they laughed – the other students? What if my answer wasn’t cool enough, good enough, right? Worse still, what if he, Mr. Carey found my answer insufficient? As dozens of cars plucked from media, my family history and just casual observation, tumbled through my mind, my tongue swelled in my mouth and refused to speak. This was high school and the Demon of Worthiness had me by the throat.

This wasn’t my first run-in with this particular Demon. Years earlier my father had gifted me his old manual typewriter, the kind with the belt of ink and the carriage return that goes bzzzzzt-DING! You had to be extra careful because each mistake meant going back, retyping the letter while holding a corrective tape dangerously close to the slamming key, then typing the correct letter over the top. People can brag about their typing speeds nowadays, but how do you really stand up to the days of manual. Still, I loved the thing. I was going to be a writer and this was going to be my instrument. I sat in the basement at the covered bumper pool table in the “red room” and banged away for hours, slowly correcting each mistake as they arose, planning out the end of each line lest I run out of space, waiting for the paper to pop lose to inform me I had just completed another page of my great novel. I think I had maybe four pages done when I brought it to my mother, she read it and smiled. She said it was great, but I pressed her, “What do you really think? You can be honest. A writer has to learn to take criticism.”

“Well,” she added hesitantly. “It’s a little derivative of a lot of stuff…”

CRUSHED Like a weight dropped from a passing fighter jet landed smack dab on my head. I tried to shake it off, but the story never saw another page. Derivative? I didn’t know then to say, that everything’s derivative. There  are no truly original ideas particularly to a young writer. We start writing what we know, and we struggle to find our voice along the way. What’s original about my writing is me. But no, I’d failed. I wasn’t worthy. I heard the demon cackle in my brain along with his close companion, The Demon of Outside Validation, and committed to working harder next time, but also to never showing anyone my work until I knew it measured up to an impossible standard.

Eventually the ribbon ran out and the typewriter was retired in favor of a word processor that stored my papers on tiny discs for editing and eventual typing out as if a ghost banged on the keys for me. Until it was ready for print the text appeared on a tiny screen about the size of a pager’s read-out. The process was type, print, edit, correct, print, then repeat until acceptable. But be very careful, one misspelling was a C, so was one run-on sentence, one faulty subject-verb agreement, one comma out of place. Two and you failed, regardless of content. High school English was brutal

So, is it odd that I felt that there could be a wrong answer to a question that asked my opinion? And let us not forget, I’m a Freshman, sitting in a class of all boys, all ready to mock and tear down each other at the first sign of weakness, difference. And in that moment where I sat frozen and mute in my chair before the Mr. Carey’s glaring eyes and the sniggering chorus of my classmates, it all mattered so much! Their approval, my validation, my inclusion in this new community. The safest answered seemed to be, say nothing. Don’t commit. And so, I didn’t.

This is what this blog is all about, putting the sword to those demon voices of doubt that keep us from sharing ourselves with the world. You were blessed with a perspective. That makes you worthy! Don’t let any voice tell you differently.

A red, Ford coupe…

A green, convertible with a clown horn affixed to the rearview mirror…

A 1992 manual transmission, red, Nissan Sentra with no AC and a non-functional tape deck...

Kit from Nightrider…

James Bond’s Aston Martin with an ejector seat…

Ben…

Maximillian…

A midnight, powder blue Ford Escort…