Sometimes it seemed like we drove for hours, with no direction and no reason except that we could. Matt, who was my partner-in-crime, my laid-back, carefree counterpart for the final two years of high school, was obsessed with cars and consequently with being out of the house. Usually he didn’t have a car of his own, but he did have a father that let us take his new Chrysler Concorde, which to us was a veritable Bentley. For a pair of 16 year olds, this made us feel like royalty. We were two sons of middle class parents with dreams of affluence clouding our eyes.
With any amount of free time on our hands we would seize the opportunity to drive. I would arrive at Matt’s house to find him already washing the Concorde in preparation for our departure, dressed in his various Abercrombie layers and barefoot. We’d grab a handful of sodas from the ‘fridge, some sunflower seeds and hit the road, going nowhere. Our rounds were set: the girls high school (to see who was at the softball or volleyball games), the mall (to visit working friends and to feed Matt), the used record stores (solely for me). Weekend visits to Devils Lake, endless trips out to Swanton to see girlfriends, to work to deliver drywall, you name it. We squandered away hours doing nothing but driving, with all the windows down and not caring a bit about anything.
The thing that made Matt such great friend-material was that he was fun. Unlike all of my other friends, he didn’t stress about GPAs and AP classes. His only goal in life was to have a good time and make sure you were as well. And the over-anxious ball of stress that was teenage me needed such a polar opposite. I latched on to Matt with clenched fists in the winter of my junior year (thank you Andrew), and proceeded to forge some of the best memories after that. He allowed me to turn off the voice in my head for once, to not be so severely caught up in life. He taught me to hope, even for small things like the weekend. And if we’re being brutally honest, that saved me during some pretty rough times.
While we did typical, boneheaded adolescent things as well, one of the greatest (and now seemingly odd) things we would do was to cruise through well-to-do neighborhoods simply to gaze at the uplit homes on hills. Matt would drive, smoking a Swisher Sweet that was obscenely stale from trying to hide them from his father. I would lay the seat back, inhale his vanilla fumes and let the cool summer night air blow over me. Matt always had the radio on (we wouldn’t be friends, otherwise), and it was almost always filled with an album by Biggie, Puff Daddy, or Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony. Occasionally he’d grant me control of the music, which meant we were listening to Erasure, Dave Matthew’s Band or Faithless (but never Bad Religion, as he hated them). We never spoke. He would drive slowly through the night and we would take it all in. We would kill extra time before a curfew with this routine, or spend a Saturday evening while waiting for phone calls. But it was never done in desperation or apathy. This was a strange, sacred but welcomed ritual for us, and we almost never talked about it.
“He taught me to hope, even for small things like the weekend. And if we’re being brutally honest, that saved me during some pretty rough times.”
After high school, in the valley of time where old friendships often slip and wither away, we inevitably lost touch. I moved south and never came back while he stayed in Toledo. I still see him at friendly get-togethers or weddings and there’s a sadness in my heart at what I lost. I dearly need more of that carefree attitude pushed upon me, as I apparently failed to learn my lesson in high school.
But as warm nights return during weekends like this, I still get chills thinking about it. I pass similar neighborhoods and still allow my thoughts to wander and dreams unravel. For a moment, I can relax. Matt may not be riding shotgun with me, but I hope he’s somewhere doing the same thing. Thanks for teaching me to let go, Matt.
