I saw a kid on a quad. We were driving back from the car dealership where I'd just plunked down the modicum of cash we saved up to buy my newly licensed daughter a cheap but passable first car. But that milestone was immediately overshadowed the moment I saw this kid. No helmet. Going full chat on a dirty grass trail about 40 yards from the edge of the road. That's the most freedom I've ever witnessed first-hand. Just a kid on a quad.
It reminds me of one summer when I visited a friend from out of town. During my visit, we all took a day trip to his Uncle-or-someone's a couple hours away. I don't remember whose house it was, but they were having a party and the place was full. Their yard sloped on the sides, down to a flat area with a beach volleyball court for some reason. This was rural Pennsylvania...or maybe it was West Virginia. To be honest, I'm pretty hazy on every detail but one: They had a quad. And they let us ride it.
This was my first time riding an ATV, so our first time around we rode tandem. I was in the back and my friend drove. It was a small quad, so there wasn't much room. I didn't know what to do when I first got on, so I just sat there until my friend tore away across the beach leaving me suspended in mid-air behind him like Wile E. Coyote. I hustled forward to get back on and when once the laughter subsided, we tried again. This time I clasped my arms around my friend so I had someone to drag down with me if I fell again. Once we got comfortable with the controls, we took turns. For what seemed like hours we did counter-clockwise laps, up the hill, across the front yard, down the other side, and across the court, ducking under the net as we raced through.
But I'm a man now, chugging along with the abundance of manly responsibilities as my caboose. So I don't do many laps in quads these days. Because in the transition from adolescence to adulthood, I traded away the naive, the selfish, and the indulgent for the aware, the considerate, the moderate, and a third-round draft pick. Unfortunately, that draft pick showed up to training camp with nothing but a dry sponge, poised to soak up all my childlike wonder. But this is what is supposed to happen. We can't have both, and we certainly shouldn't remain naive and capricious. The scales of life are calibrated to punish the practice of selfish excess with endlessly diminishing returns. Sipping cervezas on the beach is fantastic until week two when, with peeling shoulders and sand up our cracks, we glance up from our romance novel and ask ourselves, "Shouldn't I be doing something?"
But when I saw that boy rumbling along on his quad I realized how trivial it is to fall prey to the other extreme, ending up as one of Thoreau's "mass of men leading lives of quiet desperation". So we have to remember to occasionally reach out for these moments like catching a firefly. We hunch over one at dusk, squinting to isolate it against the scenery. The darkness is just enough to make us wait until it flashes one more time so we can track it and cup our hands around it. We stand up straight and take a moment to watch it pace around, no doubt wondering why it landed involuntarily. We hope it lights up one more time before it squats, opens its wings, and takes off. And then the show's over.
And tomorrow, it’s back to work.
Man, I wish I had a quad.
Thank you for reading.
Question of the week:
When’s the last time you had an epiphany? Answer in the comments. What dawned on you, and where were you when it happened?
Have a relaxing weekend.
-Tim