Letting It Roll

This is a new version of an essay from January 2021, when we were still locked down from Covid. 

Yesterday, a plastic bag suddenly showed up filled with my possessions from when my car was sold 18 months ago. When that sale happened, I was in a skilled nursing facility after my stroke, relearning how to walk, not worrying whether I would ever drive a car again. 

The bag resembled what they give you after a person has died, i.e., their last possessions. 

I didn’t die and neither did my car — it just left me for somebody else, like a girlfriend, a job, or an idea from 3 a.m. Yet it was a symbol of the independence I yearned for inside that nursing home when I was strapped down in beds with alarms on each side to guard against yet another fall.  

As I sorted through the stuff in the bag, I found a bunch of quarters, maybe $4-5 worth, that I use to keep in the car for parking meters. That's back when you needed cash to park legally.

I really needed those quarters when I was fetching my kids at school or dropping them off at soccer practice, or when we were picking up take-out Mexican or Chinese. My youngest daughter, who always had my back, saved quarters for this very purpose, and gave them to me whenever she noticed I was running low.

Along with the coins, there was a faded press pass that gave me full access to the gaming company Zynga's headquarters when I was a tech blogger for BNET and 7x7.

But most of what spilled out of the bag were the old CDs that I used to play in the car as I was shuttling my kids here and there. Often our trips were short -- fifteen minutes or so, and I'd try to pick songs that would finish before we reached our destination.

Part of the reason I did that, as any parent knows, is that your kids don’t talk much when they are teenagers and it is a good idea to have some music to fill the void.

So we had Elton John, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles but most memorably Johnny Cash. For some reason his version of "Highway Patrolman," written by Bruce Springsteen, was one of our enduring family favorites. It's a long  take (5:20) and more than once, I remember us sitting in the car waiting for it to finish before we got out to proceed on with our business.

Of course we had all heard how the story ends a hundred times before, but we still had a minute or two left before we'd be late for whatever we were going to, so we let it roll.

So you see, there’s a story to everything in that plastic bag, and I’m glad I’m still here to tell it to you.

LINKS:

• Biden defends 'difficult decision' to give Ukraine cluster bombs amid bipartisan pushback (NBC)

• Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin met Russia's Vladimir Putin after mutiny (BBC)

• U.S. leaders insist war with Russia must end before Ukraine joins NATO (WP)

• Cluster bombs: Unease grows over US sending cluster bombs to Ukraine (BBC)

• Ukraine pushes to reclaim Bakhmut, fighting on fallen city’s flanks (WP)

• Russia accuses Ukraine and Turkey of flouting prisoner exchange deal (Financial Times)

• Collapse of Dutch Government Highlights Europe’s New Migration Politics (NYT)

• As Afghan schools remain closed for girls, mental health crisis builds (WP)

• GOP states quit the program that fights voter fraud. Now they’re scrambling. (Politico)

• Christie calls estimates of Trump rally crowd size ‘absurd’ (The Hill)

• Pay Attention to What You See: Donald Trump Is Losing His Marbles (New Republic)

• Where Clarence Thomas Entered an Elite Circle and Opened a Door to the Court (NYT)

• Investigation Uncovers More of Clarence Thomas’ Undisclosed Freebies from Wealthy Pals (Rolling Stone)

• U.S. Airstrike Targets ISIS Leader in Eastern Syria (US Central Command)

• Far-Right Parties Are Rising to Power Around Europe. Is Spain Next? (NYT)

• Elon Musk Really Broke Twitter This Time (Atlantic)

• Colleges scrutinize race-based financial aid after affirmative action ruling (WP)

• AI likely to spell end of traditional school classroom, leading expert says (Guardian)

• What banks do with your money (WP)

• Decades after the dangers of lead became clear, some cities are leaving lead pipe in the ground (AP)

• VIDEO: Yellen Calls on China to Work With the U.S. to Address Climate Change (NYT)

• Deep-sea mining tussle pits France and Germany against China (Financial Times)

• It’s Weirdly Hard to Make Seawater Drinkable (Atlantic)

• The hotter it gets, the more home runs in baseball. Here’s why. (WP)

• Hamburger Creeped Out By Eerie Soy Facsimile Of Itself On Grill (The Onion)