He Thinks He’s Cool

Ran into the dumbest thing on the way to a meeting last night.

Jackass in a blacked out, cheap chevy shitbox (you know the kind with the three cylinder motors?). Fat tires, blackened windows, loud muffler. I noticed because he was next to me, tailgating the person in front of him. This is in rush hour, by the way. At the light, he was five deep. Light turns green, he’s beeping the horn just as the front guy waited his two seconds to make sure another idiot wasn’t running the red.

Seriously?

Reminded me of the son of a neighbor that would show up in a black chevy sprint pimped the same way. You could hear him all around the neighborhood. Lot of noise, not a lot of speed.

Then this morning, I saw this:

Good lord. A tactical golf cart.

He thinks he’s cool, I suppose.

In reality, it’s not. And it’s not new.

I had friends that did this back in the day. One in particular that comes to mind bought a Geo Metro. Something like this:

Our phone conversation, I think the last one we had, went:

“Dude, that’s a chick car”

“No it ain’t! I got a cool one!”

No. You didn’t. This colored black, with a dopey spoiler and rally rims isn’t cool whatsoever. Nor are the newer mini cars I’ve seen, like above. They are a car that a dad buys his daughter for a first car because he doesn’t want to spend a lot of dough.

For the money that probably cost (The first, tacticool one), you could get a really decent used car like a Mustang. Sure, it may have a 4 or 6, but still well cooler than those. Hell, I had a ’78 Civic back in the day. At the time, it was a 10 year old beater. I had no illusions that I was cool driving it, nor would I have spent a nickel on paint, rims, or whatever was available for the tiny motor it had.

I once got into a tiff with a brother in law, who did much the same thing, only bought a Cherokee. I was trying to make a point, and remind him that this was his third or fourth and all the others were trucks. I tried explaining that all these manufacturers took what was a cool small truck – Cherokee, Explorer, Blazer, Pilot, et. al. and softened them into station wagon crossovers to appeal to the soccer moms who didn’t want a minivan.

Got real hard to diffuse the steam coming from his ears.

Sure. You got a cool one.

(BTW, I saw a new explorer today, and they did toughen them up a bit, but they are still soccer mom cars.)