And sometimes they fall off completely.
I dream about cars a lot. Sooner or later, every car I’ve ever owned pops up in one. I remember one time I was driving my old red Eclipse—skimming like a hovercraft above the treetops of an immense forest. The very first car I ever bought new, a white ’84 Corolla SR5 still makes an appearance now and then, having never sold it and miraculously having been in storage all these years yet still running perfectly.
This morning I woke from a dream where I’d been tooling around (in the rain, no less) in a white Mazda Miata. I’ve never owned a Mazda Miata of any color, but it had been on my “most wanted” list for many years. I don’t remember many details except that I was on the freeway and then pulling into the parking lot at work. I was surprised to see a coveted parking spot right by the main entrance (closer than even the handicapped spots) was empty.
I had some trouble turning into it, feeling like I was either too close to the curb on the driver’s side or the stripe on the passenger side, but got out and saw that I was perfectly centered. (Notice my choice of words there.)
And then I saw that the rear passenger wheel was missing. Yep. Gone. Vanished. Fell off somewhere and I never ever realized it until I saw it and how it explained my difficulty turning into the parking spot.
“Damn, that’s going to cost a lot to replace,” was my only thought upon seeing it as I walked away, but realized I didn’t really need to worry about it because I knew I had enough credit available to cover whatever it was going to cost. Everything would all work out in the end. And at that moment I woke up.
The car-as-body/life metaphor all but slapped me in the face and surprisingly, I came away from it all with a very positive vibe. The missing wheel was a—pardon the pun—just a bump in the road, not an end to the journey.
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