Sell the Car

And go watch 'Christine.' Your future self will thank you

This week we sold a car. That may not sound like much, but in fact it is.

The car had belonged to my late father-in-law. It was a retirement present he bought for himself. To be blunt, it was the classic mid-life crisis purchase. The sleek, black sportscar was a 2002 Ford Thunderbird. V8 engine, red leather seats, and beautiful red accent on the steering wheel. And it was a convertible of course.

So far, what I’ve written sounds dismissive, but I don't mean it to be. In the last few weeks, I found any and every excuse to drive the car around town and, I'm being honest here, I started relishing it. I was never a “car guy,” and something about those fellows always alienated me. But behind the wheel of this T-Bird, I felt something stir inside me.

It was fast. Not that I am a speeder. On the contrary, I’m a rather compulsive rule follower. But it was fun hitting the speed limit faster, I'll say that. And the color scheme was nifty. Oh, and the shape. The T-Bird has an almost womanly set of curves, a purposeful design choice no doubt, given its target demographic. All in all, it felt like driving Adam West's Batmobile. The car was in fact a nifty “retro” design, built to tap into middle-aged nostalgia.

That was undoubtedly the appeal for my father-in-law when he bought the T-Bird over twenty years ago. It carried the whiff of another day. A lost day. A day that was perhaps simpler, but undeniably cooler. I suppose that also was the appeal for me.

Yet when it came time to sell, I did not protest. My mother-in-law wanted to sell it and, though I'd cultivated a few fantasies about driving a cool car for once in my life, I caught wind of a trap. The classic trap for men in the flailing second-half of life.

I'll probably discuss this with my therapist, but some deep intuition warned me off the car. And as I watched it hauled onto the Carvana trailer and locked into place, I felt a swelling relief and not one second's regret.

Perhaps that same intuition led me to rewatch John Carpenter's adaptation of Stephen King's Christine that night.

Photo by Alex Shuper on Unsplash

Even if you haven't seen the film or read the book, you likely know the gist of the story. Arnie Cunningham is the school loser who has one friend (who’s way cooler than he is). One day, Arnie sees a beaten up old Plymouth Fury for sale and insists on having it at all costs and against all reason. But Christine has a will of her own and possesses Arnie's soul, sucking him into her murderous world of envy and power.

The story is a great cautionary tale. I do recommend both reading the book and watching the film, if you haven't. They are both great, but different in important ways. In Carpenter's adaptation, the car is just born bad, right off the production line (George Thorogood's "Bad to the Bone" is the soundtrack to Christine's film origin story). King's original novel is more nuanced. Christine is a mostly normal car, imbued with the vengeful spirit of an evil man. That’s the thread I want to pull here.

When we inherit things, we very often inherit more than the object itself. Attached to things are the desires, the intent, the will of another person, forces that become imbued in the object. An inherited thing hums with spirit. And one must be very careful about the spirits we take in.

I felt something stirring deep inside me when I drove that car. Not at first, though. No, at first, I felt conspicuous and trapped. And when I opened the roof and drove with an open top, I felt exposed and nervous. But that all passed after driving it long enough.

I found myself enjoying being seen in it. I relished the looks and compliments the car drew from strangers.

And I began asking myself, is this who I want to become? Because, make no mistake, we are all in the process of becoming. The trick is to exercise some control over the process. To bring some intention to it. This begins with simple awareness of the process.

Arnie became lost in the dream of a future, cooler version of himself. Somehow the rusting carcass of an red Plymouth Fury held a faint glimpse of that future self, and he cast away all his goodness and innocence to pursue that image.

His motivation was reactionary; it was a reaction to a lifetime of being bullied and ignored. Christine was the vehicle of his vengeance against the "shitters" of the world. Empowered by the cool version of Arnie that Christine brought into being, he succeeded for a time. The shitters would cower and eventually die in the wake Arnie and his car left behind them. But the power behind the self-determination he achieved with his cursed automobile eventually destroyed him as well.

I can't say that I had all this in mind when I happily unloaded the T-Bird. But that very day, Arnie Cunningham's story came back to me and some chord of recognition bellowed in the distance.