What is value?

Although it's March 23, I got started thinking about things I have learned this past year. You know what inspired me? Riding home in a cab from work for the 3rd time in a week (last Thursday, Monday and tonight), I passed an auto parts shop that had huge lettering on the side of the building that read "WE BUY CARS!" I started thinking about my own car-selling experience. And then about other aspects of my life this year. Why do I get so damn reflective? Maybe it's the 12-hour work days. Maybe.

My dad told me something important as I was walking home from "selling" my car (I got really jacked on the price- I even tried to flirt with the salesguy. It didn't work, but damned if that asshole didn't try to call for a date the next week!) - that people aren't going to pay for the emotional value of things. At the time it seemed like a shitty way to cheer me up as I trudged sullenly from 11th avenue, CD collection in tow, clutching my tempur-pedic chair booster. But now it resonates with me.

Memories come in currency that wholly transcends our human idea of value.

The car was named Screaming Mimi the Ghetto Roadster, after her deceased sister, Bianca Pimpmobile Roadster. She was brand-spankin' new in 1989, when my Grandpa drove her off the lot of "Mahwah Honda" in Mahwah, New Jersey. She was the car in which my Grandpa drove us to lunches, tromping on the pedal then hitting the brakes, lurching us forward. If I didn't love him more than anything, I really would've sued him for whiplash. Then she was given to my brother, who took her up to college. During holidays, he would drive her down straight thru the night, not stopping once to pee. He drove with all the windows up to prevent wind resistance and he didn't use the air conditioner. Why? Because that would "waste" the gas, causing him to have to stop at the gas station! Oh, the agony. Then she was given to me - or, excuse me, SOLD to me - by my brother (I argued him down off the Kelley Blue Book price b/c it was going to screw me - yeah, my own brother!), who was going to married that summer and use his future wife's car.

I LOVED Mimi, mostly b/c I love the freedom of the open road, open windows and a blaring sound system, and she allowed me that. I couldn't let her go even after I moved into NYC, and had to rush home every Monday night in order to repark the car b/c of "alternate side parking" laws. Then some punk kids broke into her, stole my radio (slash freedom) and busted the passenger door with a crowbar. WTF?!! She was becoming a liability - more trouble than she was ending up being worth to me. I had to sell her.

Drove her into Manhattan to this used car sales place. Sat in the room with the son's owner, trying to flirt my way to a higher price. No such luck. I got $300 for my baby car. THREE-HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR MY FREEDOM AND LAST REMEMBERANCE OF MY GRANDFATHER! I was so crushed, I cried all the way home.

My dad consoled me as we chatted and I sobbed. I felt I was robbed - robbed of the memories, robbed of my happiness, robbed of my ticket out of the city should I decide to change my mind about moving here without knowing anyone or having anything, robbed of what I felt was the "true" value of the car. He told me that there were 2 values of the car: the emotional and the rational. The emotional was what I felt - the $2,500 the Kelley Blue Book value (if the car was in perfect condition and didn't have many miles on it, which it wasn't and it did). And the rational was what the rest of the world saw - a 16-year-old car with 10s of thousands of miles on it, a busted passenger door, no radio, an overheated radiator and a slight old smell.

What is the true value of objects? Why do we get so attached to hunks of metal? Why did I write such a long blog about this car?

Because I loved it so much.