One year, it happened. Gene Autry gave us (i.e., Grandma and Grandpa Doty who actually knew Gene) tickets for his box seat. I was a boy of eleven or twelve, and, as one might imagine, very excited. My younger brother and sister were already in Studio City visiting grandpa and grandma. The rest of us were going to take the Gold/Bronze Toyota Van from our Mesa, Arizona house out to California in time to go to the game.

Alas, as we packed the back of the van sitting in the garage, which had it’s hatch opened, my even younger toddler brother pushed the garage door button. The closing garage door turned the hatch from a "/" into a "^". The hatch would no longer close. We didn’t make it to the game (my other siblings did). Gene never gave us his box seats again.

(Not our actual van)

Yesterday, after getting my oldest daughter Grace out of the back of the car and juggling both my younger daughter Ava and a bag of goodies from Home Depot, I closed the garage door on the open hatch of our Honda Pilot. Right after pushing the button, I heard an an awful crunching sound. I turned around, recognized the situation, and reversed the garage door. Aside from a few little scratches that Grace kindly pointed out, the hatch thankfully closes fine. Apparently, if you want to turn your hatch into a "^", you have to be leaving to do something really important.

P.S.

Am I really old enough to have once thought that van was cool?

P.P.S.

I learned to drive on that same (not the one above) bronze/gold, manual shift, Toyota van. I was a real chick magnet driving that thing around Mesa and Gilbert. Finally, we upgraded and I got to drive my mom’s Dodge Carivan around.

[I hate minivans.]

I remember it well because I was driving to school my first year of law school. I had Civil Procedure that morning, and I had been listening to these lame Lord of the Rings tapes that my mother had bought at Costco. I had made it far enough through them that I felt I needed to finish them. So the radio was off and adults imitating the squeeky voices of hobbits filled my the interior of my Green Jetta. We generally didn’t watch TV in the mornings back then, so during breakfast I didn’t hear anything, and on my way to school I was listening to the Lord of the Rings…

I parked at the back of lot 57, which is the big mall parking lot at ASU. You take a bus from the lot to the school. As I got out of my car and went to the bus stop all the way at the back of the lot (it was advantageous to park at the back of the lot because you got to get on the bus first and therefore get a seat rather than stand), there was a kid who was talking obnoxiously loud into his cell phone about how much he was in support of Israel and how bad the terrorists were. I remember noting to myself how much of a dork that guy was. I distinctly remember thinking he was both a drama queen and that nobody was interested in his conversation with his phone.

To me it was just a normal day. I made it to school, got my books out of my locker and went to class with five minutes to spare. It was there I heard for the first time that one of the twin towers had collapsed. You can imagine my skepticism when I heard it, but when I learned that my fellow student was deadly serious, it was one of those moments where you feel scared and vulnerable for a few split seconds before the rational side wakes up and says "No Way!" to living in fear.

The teacher got to class and excused us for the day. Well, he gave us the option to have class or go home and follow the news. With such an option, it would have been unanimous either way. We went home and we all were glued to the TV for the rest of the day.