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| The pimp-ass 1986 Mercury Grand Marquis |
I strategically waited to start dating until I could drive. The thought of having my parents drive me to a date was enough of a buzz kill to keep me from even thinking about it until I had received my drivers license. This, coupled with the fact that I was completely invisible to all of the girls in my class (which to this day I prefer to see as a happy coincidence and not my own crippling insecurity and undesirablitiy prior to age sixteen), made dating off limits until I could provide my own transportation. Once I was an "earner" - thank you Best Buy - with some expendable income and a totally bitching ride, I was finally ready to enter the high school dating scene.
It was within this context that I found myself on my very first date, in the Spring of my junior year of high school, with a girl on whom I had had a crush for a very long time. My exterior composure (or what I remember as composure) for most of the evening belied a bizarre cocktail of emotions immediately beneath the surface. I was most certainly attracted to her but I also felt amazed, grateful, terrified, giddy, bewildered, and sweaty for the duration of the date. I'm pretty sure I had a good time, but there was definitely some relief when I finally dropped her off at home. I'm also pretty sure everything that came out of my mouth the entire evening was basically the verbal equivalent of dogshit. Nonetheless, the date was a success, and I drove home in the euphoric fog of young love.
As I made my way home I wasn't paying much attention to the road. My mind wandered through the events of the evening, replaying some of the more memorable moments. I felt all of the feelings and was excited that I had actually taken my first step toward romance with another person. I'm pretty sure it was this general state of euphoria that distracted me from the large mammal that was standing in my lane as I barreled down the narrow strip of highway in the Spring darkness. Before I knew what was happening my lights flashed on the brown fur and terrified eyes of a rather large deer. I touched the breaks, but by the time I reacted my car made impact.
A side note about the Grand Marquis. As I mentioned earlier, this car was built like a tank. A year after this story occurred, I was driving the same car through the parking lot at school when a kid, driving 30 miles per hour the in the wrong direction on snow and ice, sandwiched his parents' sedan
between my car and a parked school bus. The sedan was totaled: broken axle, shattered passenger side windows, detached front fender, and one entire side caved in from impact with the bus. Damage to the Grand Marquis: broken front blinker light. So my car, yeah, one bad motherfucker.
As my car hit the deer I braced myself and steadied the vehicle. What I was not prepared for was how the deer immediately exploded all over my windshield and down the entire driver's side of the car. The only equivalent I can think of is driving out from underneath a shelter into a sudden downpour of really heavy rain. Except this wasn't rain. I felt the deer bounce off the hood, get dragged for a bit underneath the car, and then finally come free at the rear of the vehicle. I couldn't see a thing out of any of my windows, so I turned on the wipers smearing deer all over the windshield.
I had to pull over. My mind, which had been blissfully recalling romantic memories only moments earlier, was now contemplating the deer murder I had just committed. I was terrified and had absolutely no idea what to do. I crawled across the roomy bench seat of the Grand Marquis, opened the passenger door (the only side of the car not entirely caked in deer guts and entrails), and got out to survey the damage. Upon exiting the vehicle I was immediately overpowered by the smell of shit.
You see, the Grand Marquis had not merely hit the deer. With the accuracy of a surgeon's scalpel, the front edge of the car made a two foot long incision in the abdomen of the animal, allowing the entire contents of its stomach and intestines to erupt in an unspeakable discharge of foulness that now covered the entire front and driver's side of the vehicle. I looked back at the lifeless deer, laying peacefully on the highway and shuddered. After surveying the damage, I sheepishly returned to the car, crawled back across the bench seat, cleared the windshield to the best of my ability, and slowly - so very slowly - continued on my way. After arriving home and hosing off the exterior of the vehicle, I was amazed to discover only a small dent in the front quarter panel, but otherwise no other damage.
Like I said. Badass.
In the end, I drove the Grand Marquis for another year until the transmission finally gave out. It was a good first car and I think about it occasionally, especially when the weather gets warm and my thoughts nostalgically turn to the past. It's funny to think about how important that car was to me and what it represented at the time. I was in such a hurry to grow up. The date, the job, the car - these were all teenage rites of passage for a suburban kid like me and they were all formative experiences that helped shape me as a young adult.
As I see it now, that Spring evening from my junior year of high school was a seam in the fabric of my life. I was a confident young man on his first ever date but I was also a terrified child who had just killed an animal. I was simultaneously invincible and vulnerable that evening. I think we all encounter these seams from time to time and as I grow older I find the veneer of my invincibility wearing away. I am now beginning to see my own mortality and weakness, understand the importance of people in my life, and to discover (to borrow from Brene Brown) the power of vulnerability and how it can connect and bring me closer to loved ones. In the end, it is our strengths that attract us to one another but our vulnerability is what actually binds us together.
*I'm happy to report that my date to roadkill ratio has since dramatically improved.
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