I apologize for the month-long break I seemed to have taken. There have been some small conversations that I shared with the Facebook group- but nothing really seemed like it was long enough for a whole blog post. Then, my mom passed away on Christmas night (it was almost midnight, she very nearly made it- she had promised my dad she wouldn't leave him on Christmas). Here's a blog post about that- over on my fibro blog.
So... back to the conversation today...
The Disabled Guy is watching Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction on the SPEED channel. He can- and has- watched this thing for days. Days. Not an exaggeration. Over the weekend, he watched a marathon of "NCIS" on Saturday and on Sunday, he watched one of the two seasons he got on DVD for his birthday from our daughter, Ceej. Then on Monday, he watched the all-day marathon on USA network. Yeah, three straight days of Mark Harmon and the gang. Funny, I finally can look at him without thinking: "That's Mister Shoop from Summer School..." And all it took was almost three solid days of seeing him as Special Agent Jethro Gibbs.
The Barrett-Jackson Auction.
DG: "You know what the bad thing is about this thing?"
Me: "That in this economy, people are laying tens of thousands of dollars on a car they won't drive?"
DG: "No, they can't drive them. They're show cars."
Me: "That's what I said, they won't drive them."
There was a pause. I don't know if he was merely eating or if he was pondering that I had said what he said or just staring at the shiny cars on the TV. Then he said, "You know, the bad thing about this is that I coulda bought some of those cars in the 70s."
Me: [trying not to spawn a debate of how things were better in the old days] "Okay then."
DG: "Really. I coulda bought some of these cars back when I was a teenager in the 70s."
Me: "Uh, you weren't a teenager in the 70s."
DG: [slight pause] "Okay then, the 80s."
And that's where it ended. I tried to get him to see the alternate life of this imaginary classic car that he'd buy as a teen in the mid-80s. We got married at the end of 1986. We had our first child in 1989 (subsequent kids in 1992 and 1993). Even if the imaginary car had a backseat, we would have eventually had to upgrade to something with four-doors. Oh, DG's imaginary car was not a four-door. That's not cool.
In 1994, one week from our youngest's first birthday, I had a car accident. A woman ran a red light and slammed into our car. I was alone, having left the kids home with DG. I had to take the dog to the vet that morning, so he took the morning off work and when the vet didn't take very long, he told me just to go to the store without the kids, he'd stay home (meaning he'd nap on the sofa while they were napping in their rooms). I was on my way back from the grocery store in our 1989 Dodge Spirit when the lady ran that red light. Car was totaled. She not only destroyed the body, she broke the front axle and bent the frame. What was she driving? A little white Toyota. Yeah. Totaled.
Now that I think about it, had I been in a classic car from the early 70s that had been lovingly restored in the middle 80s by a teen-aged boy, I might have gone unhurt. Cars were made of metal back then.
When I said that thought out loud, DG said, "SEE!? I told you!"
I don't know what he thinks he told me, but there you go.
