Priceless

Funny how senseless hope can be sometimes. Like a funeral procession I make several loops around my apartment building last night, scanning over the same cars I see everyday. A brisk, 21 degree New England frost creeps up the window as my chapped thumb clicks buttons labeled “PANIC” and “OPTION” because a car alarm clicker I’m friends with had lost its partner. My car was stolen last night. A gorgeous, restored, custom 1995 Acura Integra GSR. 190k miles, but you’d never know it. Bounced you around like a bad pilot on approach, but you loved it. Problem after mechanical problem, but you fixed it.

I believe strongly there are things in this world that you cannot attach a price to. That objects can become more than the sum of their parts, that great design inspires great experiences, that inanimation gains life through knowing, better than the user him/herself, what it is ultimately designed to do. This car had a life. A graduation gift from my father, it was priceless not because of performance, handling or looks, but because it represented something a father I was only beginning to know at the time spent so much of his time and energy to find… for a time in my life that I worked so to make it through… in a way only it could deliver.

Someday science will catch up to reality. Engineers will invent materials that have a life of their own. Steel frames with a heartbeat, locatable by GPS anytime, anywhere. Someday they’ll phone home faster than some chop-shop can isolate and inactivate them. Someday the glass chips they leave behind will tell a story. Someday technology will be smarter.

Till then I wait for a faceless insurance company to put a price tag on a father’s love and a phenomenal five year driving experience.

Priceless.

— Clif @ 11:38 am