cougarguard.com — unofficial BYU Cougars / LDS sports, football, basketball forum and message board

For the first time in my life, I sold a car. To someone other than a member of my immediately family. I'm all growed up now.

It wasn't a very nice car. Nor did I particularly like it when we owned it. A 2001 Nissan Sentra. So why did I feel wistful as it left my driveway?

Things around us--our homes, our cars, buildings--they mark the time. They become associated with people and experiences and memories. But for most of us, they are transitory objects. We sell the home. We dump the car.

My parents had the same home phone number from the early 1980s. Then they moved away. I knew it was a little bit silly, but I thought it was a shame to lose the phone number. Another little bit of the past, swept aside by time. As it turned out, they got the phone number back when they moved back.

2001. I think that was the year I joined cougarboard. That seems like a long, long time ago. I guess it was. And now I won't be motoring around in the same little car, for the first time since then.

My car is probably parked in someone's yard up somewhere north of town in the sticks. It's going to go until it won't go no more. Sort of like us. From place to place, time to time. We go until we don't.

Maybe someone will be wistful, when my mortal coil pulls out of the driveway for the last time.