So. Once upon a time, I was ridin' shotgun in a little black car drivin' through Mesa....god knows where we were headed, but my guess is Bookmans....we were probably listening to music a little too loud, and the heat was shimmering off the asphalt. We're sitting at a stoplight, and the girl in the driver's seat bursts into laughter and points at the car in front of us. I look ahead, and also burst into laughter. The car. It had a custom license plate. It read: 1papi4u. The vato was waaaaay too cool for school. And certainly too cool for Mesa, in his beater car, cruisin' down the street in the middle of summer with his windows rolled down.
After that, we would text each other any custom plates that were particularly good. Even after she left Tempe. Even after I moved farther away to San Francisco. About once a week, maybe every two weeks, I would get a text with only the characters of the license plate.
Today, I was driving to rehearsal for a show she would really love, and I was on the bay bridge and I saw it. A sports car with a midlife crisis guy. And the license plate read TT TWSTR. I burst out laughing. And then I started to cry.
Those texts will never again show up on my phone, and I won't ever send one again. Chances are, though, that it's a long time before seeing one doesn't make me cry.
No comments:
Post a Comment