The Green Red Green (10 page)

I started her up and what do you know …

I got a hundred dollars for it from the scrap metal dealer.

I
know that people tend to have regrets in their lives, and as they get older, these regrets can become debilitating. But you can’t go back and change any of them, and they can actually stop you from doing things now, out of fear that you’ll regret those things later. They tell me you must have regrets to be normal, though, so to keep the real bad ones out of my mind, I’ve made a list of reasonable regrets that are bad enough to make me feel a slight twinge of guilt, but not so terrible that I end up hating myself. Here are my regrets:

A
lot of guys I know have a photograph of themselves in great physical shape. Maybe they were on the rowing team or running every day, or maybe they just had the time and motivation to work out on a regular basis. So they have this picture of themselves with a small waist and rippling muscles. It might be on a guy’s desk or somewhere in his home, or even worse, it’s buried deep in his mind. Every time he sees or even thinks about that picture, he is reminded of how the aging process has destroyed him. It’s been a constant deterioration from that earlier peak of physical prowess to the pitiful, flabby, lethargic, bald specimen he has now become.

I, on the other hand, have a picture of myself on the beach at the age of thirteen. My weight was within ten pounds of what it is now, and there is no physical evidence of any type of muscle. I can stand beside that picture at any time and comfort myself that I have not “started to sag” or “let myself go” or “lost a step.” I was out of shape at thirteen, and I’ve maintained it all these years. Nobody looks at my picture and says, “Wow, is that you?”

Instead of looking good for a year or two and then feeling bad my whole life, I opted for looking bad all the time and feeling good my whole life.

T
here is a peculiar disease that has plagued the men in my family. In fact, it seems to apply to almost all men in all families. I think it’s called Riser’s Syndrome. There’s only one easy-to-spot symptom: as you get into middle age and beyond, you find yourself getting up earlier and earlier. A man who used
to sleep till lunch at twenty-seven will leap out of bed at the crack of dawn at forty-eight.

And the disease seems to progress as you get older. Generally, you get up an hour earlier for every ten years of your age. If you were getting up at seven when you were thirty, you’ll get up at six at forty, you’ll get up at five at fifty, and so on. If you live long enough, you actually run the risk of getting up before you go to bed. That’s why older men start back-timing their bedtime. We yawn through dinner, nap on the couch, and generally try to hit the sack by 9:30 p.m. This can be very inconvenient for our wives and family, not to mention our dinner guests.

So I’ve come up with a solution. If you’re going to bed at 9 p.m. and getting up at 5 a.m., you’re getting eight hours’ sleep—they’re just not the right eight hours. You need to move east—two time zones east, to be precise, where 9 p.m. becomes 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. becomes 7 a.m. That’s acceptable for anybody. And in another ten years, you’ll have to move farther east. Keep doing this and you will always be keeping proper hours, no matter how old you get. Besides, I hear China is a great place to live.

N
othing turns women on faster than a great car, and nothing turns them off faster than the guy who’s driving it. The trick is to accessorize your car so that it screams “hunk,” and then keep your mouth shut or the relationship will go “thunk.”

Women like flash. The kind of flash you do with a paint job, that is, rather than a raincoat. Paint your car a flashy colour: red,
silver, deep blue. Avoid yellow, brown, and plaid. Be careful when choosing murals for your van. Horses and rock groups and spaceships are okay, but paintings of nude babes tend to attract gay women or, worse still, straight men.

Decals are a reflection of your personality. “I Brake for Stray Dogs” suggests sensitivity, but “I Brake for Stray Dogs When I’m Hungry” sends a whole other message, and “I Brake for Stray Dogs When I’m Lonely” is just disturbing. You can send out the message that you’re a worldly, well-travelled guy with bumper stickers that say “Talladega Speedway Is for Lovers,” “We Saw the World’s Largest Road Apple,” or “I’d Rather Be in Go-Kart Universe, Wisconsin.” People generally believe that all signs lie, so having a decal that reads “I’m a Swell Guy” or “I’m Way Cool” or “Tested Negative” sends the exact opposite message. Try one that says “I’m Willing to Give Women One Final Chance—Apply Within.” It’s just the kind of challenge that women can’t resist.

If you really want to impress the ladies, you’ve got to get fun-fur seat covers in Day-Glo pink or tiger stripes. Trust me. And don’t just use old shag carpeting from your deck or try stretching out a velour sweater you got at a Star Trek convention. Spend the money and get the proper seat covers. They cost a bit, but they’ll save you a lot in flowers and candy.

It’s been my experience that most women don’t know the difference between, say, a ‘Cuda and a HemiCuda. It’s true. But they
do recognize a great set of wheel disks. If you’re going out at nights, you can probably get away with a set of garbage can lids sprayed silver.

Mud flaps on the rear tires and a big leather cover to prevent the hood from stone chips also send a message that you are a sensitive, caring guy. At least when it comes to your car. And a woman is naturally curious to find out if you will have the same respect and concern for her. Even though no other guy she’s met with a car like yours did. The design on the mud flaps can make or break your chances. A top hat or a die looks very classy. A silhouette of a naked woman can be scary. Especially if you traced it.

The more lights you have adorning your vehicle the better. Cover the grill, the side mirrors, the rear window, and all the window trim with lights, then add fluorescent ground effects and even a laser beam coming out of your tailpipe. The appearance that the sun shines out of your exhaust pipe gets respect. If you have enough disposable income to completely cover your car with lights, do it. (Right after Christmas, hardware stores sell off strings of lights dirt cheap.) If you have enough bulbs, you can make your car look like something out of
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
, or that electric light parade at Disney World, or maybe even a galaxy. Stars give off light. If you give off light, you must be a star. (Don’t assume that hanging a moon will enhance this image.)

LOUD! Jack up the car and look along the exhaust pipe until you see a section that’s bigger than the rest. That’s the muffler. Hack the muffler off with a pickaxe. Now you’ve got some serious engine noise happening. Next, find a punk rock band that’s bankrupt. That shouldn’t be hard. If all you find is a punk rock band that’s doing well, wait a week. Buy all their equipment cheap or trade them for razor blades. Pile all the speakers and amps into your back seat and hook them up to your radio. Turn the bass up to where the car is hopping off the pavement and doing the Macarena. This not only lets the women know you can dance, but also tells the Catholic girls that you understand rhythm. (Do not turn the radio to an alltalk station. Women don’t like guys who are all talk.)

Don’t waste your money here. Only other guys care that it’s a 1968 Boss Chevy Nova in mint with Harley carbs, and you don’t want to attract guys, remember? Women couldn’t care less what kind of car it is. Once women see the lights and hear the racket, they’ll have made up their minds.

The key is to find a way not to be ignored. If you deck your car out the way I’ve described, the women will definitely notice. If they’re pointing and laughing, you can sneak around on foot and join them with comments like “Look at that piece of crap. What a loser.” Have a few laughs with them about it. They’ll like you. You’ll probably get to take them home. Call a cab. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to come and get your car till the morning.

S
ome people see the aging process as the law of diminishing returns. I prefer to look at it as nature’s way of coordinating knowledge, experience, and focus. As you lose your hair and vision and hearing and libido and general degree of attractiveness to members of the opposite sex—or any sex, of any species—you’re left to concentrate on your true purpose in life. I’m still not completely
sure what that is, but for me it’s trending toward some combination of eating junk food, watching television, and complaining. I’m sure I’ll have a clearer picture any day now. I’ll keep you posted.

T
ires are expensive. Why they can’t make a tire that will carry a ton of metal at one hundred miles an hour for at least fifty thousand miles for less than ten dollars is beyond me. That’s just the kind of corporate gouging John and Jane Consumer have to live with. So here are a few tire suggestions that can save you big bucks.

No-name tires can be bought at discount prices. Make sure you examine them carefully, though. They could be seconds, and in a race against time, you want more than seconds. On the other hand, they could be perfectly good tires that just didn’t sell for some reason. Maybe the whitewalls are more of an off-white, or maybe the word “ply” is misspelled or the tread mark says “I’m a dork.” Chances are these tires were made in the same way and the same factory as the expensive tires. They are every bit as good. Look for “Made in USA” or “Made in Japan.” Avoid “Made in Madagascar.”

And be careful that they are not in fact homemade tires from somebody’s basement rubber-manufacturing kit. Is the brand just a guy’s name, like Bob or Herbie? Are there tools sticking out of the sidewalls? Are the treads in the same pattern as a pie crust? Is the tire made from a bunch of erasers glued together? When you come over the crest of a hill at eighty miles an hour to find a
flock of sheep on the road, you’ll be sorry you went with the Herbie Stove-bolted Roadial.

Used tires are your cheapest source of quality rubber. If you’re not concerned about all four tires being exactly the same colour or shape or size—or for the same vehicle—you can pick up hundreds of freebies just by going to a mall after dark with a pile of trunk keys. Most people never use their spare, and if they’re at the mall, that proves they’re shoppers, so they’ll probably thank you for the extra trunk space. Just stay clear of the little space-saver spares. They can make a Lincoln Town Car look like a hippo in high heels.

When a car is standing still, 90 percent of the tire is not even touching the ground. There is no more effective way of making your tires last than not moving your car. If for any reason you do have to move the car, don’t forget the laws of physics. Particularly the tangential and centrifugal forces exerted on a rotating object. What this means is that the faster your tire is spinning, the rounder it becomes. And the rounder it becomes, the less contact it has with the road. The less contact with the road, the longer the tire will last. The ultimate would be for the tire to have no contact with the road whatsoever. (Yes, it’s true that many accidents have occurred when a vehicle loses contact with the road, but on the upside, the tires are often in very good condition for resale.)

At rest, a tire is almost flat on one side. At eight hundred miles an hour, it is believed to be perfectly round (although nobody’s ever had the guts to lean out and look). So if your car can’t be at rest, you should try to get as close to eight hundred miles an hour
as possible. (Drivers who commute down Mt. Fuji rarely complain of tire wear.)