Selling the car

Today I'm selling my car. Or at least offering it on Craig's List. It's a pretty 1992 Cadillac Deville and I've enjoyed it greatly. Silver-gray with a sparkly silver pinstripe down each side. It fit the image of the older, grayer, thoroughly established juggler/publisher very nicely. (When I picked Millard up from the airport when the Caddi was new he raised an eyebrow and said, "I see Juggling's doing well for you.") My first thought when buying it was to put little UN flags on the front bumper and drive with my headlights flashing continuously.

The new car gets twice the milage and is at least as pretty. A different style, though, but elegant in its way. It's a 2006 Scion xB, in Arctic White. My first thought was to paint it like an Animal Crackers box, like a circus wagon. My second thought was not to.

It too has all the room needed for wife and wheelchair, thanks to Tardis technology. It's bigger on the inside than seems possible from the outside; you sit down in it as if it were a sedan, but you can see over all the other cars, even the other xBs (which I don't understand at all). The ride is exactly like my 1974 Toyota Corolla's was: stiff and precise, and it has the same power as my long-departed MGA. I'll just have to drive more gently when Judith is with me, which will also keep her chair from rattling.

So I was getting the Caddi spiffed up to sell when I got stuck in the carwash lot because I played the radio really really loud while vacuuming it, and the battery died. Waiting for the Better World Club people (so much saner than AAA) to come rescue me, I called home to say I'd be late and not to worry. Judith was writing haiku, and suggested I might pass the time by doing the same.

She shouted and clapped when, in my best dramatic voice, I read the first line to her in my deepest sepulchral voice.


Now, the parking lot
lines delimit mine from thine,
polishing the lines
of my ghost-gray, silvered, car,
only sixteen MPG.