RIP Lil'BoBo

i had a reunion last night.

i was nervous, excited and flooded with the best and worst memories.

i saw him hanging out on a street. i've never seen him there before. he looked good. real good.

he is my first car. a 1985 baby blue plymoth horizon. 4 doors, cause i'm classy.

i called him lil'bobo. he wasn't the coolest, safest or most reliable car...but he got me from a to b. well, he got me from a to z. there were lots of stops in between.

without warning, lil' bobo would start smoking from the hood and i would have to pull over. i took lots of rides from strangers. i felt the car was more dangerous.

my dad made a cooling device for lil'bobo because he didn't have air conditioning. now that i think of it, i don't know if he had heat either. what he lacked in efficiency, he made up for in novelty. and matchmaking.

lil'bobo also had a hankering for stopping when i reversed. nbd, unless you are in the over populated neenah high school parking lot at the end of the day. ptl, a couple of senior hotties were always there to help. i played the damsel in distress, and their developing muscles and soccer mops easily pushed me to safety, and tuller road.

personal interaction with those hotties gained me major points in my quest to go from 2 friends to hanging out with the cool kids. i'd like to think it was more lil'bobo and less of my hellen keller impressions and prank call skills that got me to my spot with the "corner kids".

we laid lil'bobo to rest sometime during my junior year. i upgraded to a jeep and my youth pastor told me not even he would buy lil'bobo from me. he suggested putting weights on the gas pedals and sending him for a long term baptismal into lake winnebago. i was sad about it, so chas took one of his seats out for me to keep as a memory.

that seat still rests in our garage. next to suzi, the armless mannequin and the vinyl couch i stole from the teachers lounge. he may be gone, but memories of him rest in my heart forever. and on the street tyler lives on.