The One with the Old Friend

Dad got Troi running again. He was out driving around my old best friend. It's funny to think of all the things that happened in that car, all the friends and boyfriends who came and went. All the times that I took her driving late at night because I felt like she was my only friend in the world. I graduated from high school with that car, graduated from college with that car and drove myself to my first job in that car. In fact, I took that car on the vacation that eventually landed me a job at the Morning News, my childhood dream. She was with me for the best summer of my life when I was an intern in Arlington. I took Muggsy home in that car, a passing of the torch to my new best friend who doesn't speak English. When I bought my new Nissan, I cried the whole way home because I finally had a car that was just a car, no personality like the one I had created in Troi when I was a suicidal teenager who just didn't quite fit in. I drove Troi to my first Cowboys game as a season ticket holder, another childhood dream, and finally sent her back to the farm when I moved to California with a perfect boyfriend and three dogs. I have my family now and don't need her. But it's nice to hear that she's running again. She'll always be a piece of me.

"There's a piece of Maria in every song that I sing. And the price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings." -- Mrs. Potter's Lullaby Counting Crows