Monday, December 11, 2006

If you can read this, your Internet is too close

As I peeled the remains of an "I'd rather be playing Ultimate" bumper sticker off my bumper, I wondered if drivers with "Honk for Jesus" stickers went through a similar range of emotions when they picked and poked at the remains of their stickers. As the tiny sticker flakes stopped peeling off in my hand, I thought about the time in Columbus when I lived by my bumper sticker. I found a place where there was too much Ultimate or at least not enough else. I'd rather be playing Ultimate, it turns out, really only works when there's actually something else to be done.

As I scraped at the sticker with a screwdriver, I was reminded of how much Ultimate has meant to me. I get confused when my weekends are without it. Nearly all my friends who don't share some connection to Mizzou are Ultimate players. Ultimate is the reason I wake up Sunday afternoon and the reason I limp to work Monday morning. I run because I like it, but I run more because it will keep me in shape for chasing discs. There's something to this Ultimate thing.

Finally, as I turned to the razor blade and I scraped away the last of "playing," I worried that maybe I'd let Ultimate become too important. Bumper sticker removal and tears don't go together. With a flick of the blade, I erased Ultimate from Lucille. She shuddered as she remembered trips to Lawrence and through Slippery Rock. Discs pulled from her trunk in places as far apart as here and Hays. "Too important?" Lucille's freshly cleaned maroon body asked. Then quietly she directed me to her gold racing stripes. I saw in the stripes what she wanted me to see. Lucille is a fine car without those stripes, but that flair makes her special.

Honk for that.

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