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My 1973 BMW 2002 is the one thing I own that I’d consider a prized possession. The car was originally owned by Mr. Bellows, the husband of the aforementioned Mrs. Bellows, the little old lady who owns a home with pink trim on our block.
I vividly remember Mr. Bellows driving the car into his parking lot when I was 11-years-old.


I was reading a Hardy Boys book when I heard it idling down the street. It was a complete wreck of a car. Splotches of worn red paint, the hood and passenger door with considerable denting, and the sound of the clutch grinding as it tried valiantly to ease into third gear. It was love at first sight for me. The car was imperfect but I immediately knew it was enduring. Sexy, sturdy and most of all quirky.


For two years, Mr. Bellows worked on the car. I’d walk past his house on the way home from school and everyday he’d be clanging away. One day, I worked up the nerve to approach him. He smiled broadly when I told him I thought the car was really neat.


From that point on, I visited him once or twice a week until the car was finished. On the day the paint was finally dry, Mr. Bellows even let me apply a specially made bumper sticker to the back that said “Der Kleine Rot Hure”. I found out that it meant “The Little Red Bitch”. We made a pact that I wouldn’t ever tell Mrs. Bellows what it meant.


The next day, I walked by the house and was surprised to see that the garage door was closed but the car was parked in the driveway. An entire month went by and I didn’t see the car move from its spot. I was crushed. Selfishly, his project had become my pride and joy and I was hoping beyond hope that I’d get to take a ride with him.


On a Friday afternoon, in the middle of October, I answered the door to find Mr. Bellows standing with keys in one hand and a goofy grin on his face. I ran pell-mell up to my room, threw some shoes on and was in the car in a flash.


Before we left, he turned to me and told me he was just going to drive. He didn’t have any destination. He just wanted to drive if that was alright with me. We drove, mostly in silence, for two hours. We both had giddy smiles splashed across our faces the entire time. It was by far the sweetest silence I had ever experienced.
On our way home, Mr. Bellows stopped in a high school parking lot.


It was late and the only light was from the parking lot streetlamps. He got out of the car, came around to my side and opened the door.


“Wanna take her for a spin?” he asked.


My heart nearly leapt from my throat. I rushed to the driver’s side and got in. That night, Mr. Bellows taught me how to drive. He also taught me that old age can’t hide the boy that is always lurking somewhere beneath the surface.


When Mr. Bellows pulled back into my driveway that night, and
my euphoria had subsided a fraction, I asked him what had taken him so long to take the car out for a drive.


He explained to me that a long time ago, when his son was 18, they had seen a brand new BMW 2002 on a dealer’s lot. They both agreed that it was a beautiful car. His son said that it was his dream to one day own one. Two weeks after that, in a cruel twist of fate, his son was killed by a drunk driver.


Mr. Bellows promised himself that when he retired he would fulfill his son’s dream. After he had finished the car, Mr. Bellows said that a profound sadness had overtaken him and that he hadn’t really ever grieved for his son until he finished the car. Even though I was only 13 at the time, I think I understood. He told me that it was my enthusiasm about the car that had finally propelled him to take the car out. He thanked me for that.


Two years later, Mr. Bellows died of cancer. Mrs. Bellows left the car in their driveway, covered and lifeless.


On my 16th birthday, I walked out of my house to find the 2002 parked in my driveway with a giant bow wrapped around it. There was a card on the windshield. I opened it up and it read:


Dear Walter,
Before my husband passed he made me promise that I’d do this for you on your 16th birthday. There is no one else in the world he’d rather give this to than you. Thank you for being a part of one of the last joys he had in his life. He appreciated it more than you know and somewhere out there I do think our son did as well.
Oh and by the way, I know what the bumper sticker says you little shit!
Happy Birthday,
Mrs. Bellows


To this day, it is still the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me and I hope it sheds some light about why I’m outside fretting over the damage Brodie Brockford has done to my passenger side door.


Some neighbor kids are playing roller hockey in the street, while their mothers congregate in a circle in one of the yards, squawking away at one another. Mr. Smith, the previously mentioned owner of house number NINETEEN with PINK trim, is outside on a short ladder, his limbs stretched to gumby-like extremes, furiously painting his pink trim blue.


I walk a few feet towards Mr. Smith and respectfully call out to him.


“Hi, Mr. Smith. I see you’re painting your pink trim blue again.”


Mr. Smith nods his head without looking in my direction and mutters something under his breath.


Hoping to better understand why he continues to self-sabotage himself, I ask what I think is a logical question.


“Doesn’t the HOA keep fining you and making you paint it back to pink each time?”


Mr. Smith jerks towards me so violently he nearly flings himself from the ladder.

His face turns ruddy-faced English red and a tree of veins appears across his forehead.


“Yeah, but those Commies got another thing coming the next time they put a notice on my door!”


“What do you mean?”


An evil smile complements his tree of veins, which now seem to be pounding not with blood but venom.


“Let’s just say that I’ll be painting the trim with gallons of their blood if they try and make me change it again.”


I look to his face, searching for a sign that he is simply making morbid light of the situation. He is not.


Mr. Smith goes on to demonstrate with his paintbrush, the stabbing that will occur when another notice appears on his door. He stabs the air with feverish precision. Blue paint specks fly back at him, landing on his clothing, face and mustache. He finally stops and gathers himself, breathing hard.


“Fucking pricks will wish they never crossed me!”


I take a few deliberate steps backward, trying my best to not look alarmed.


“Alright then. Keep up the good fight.”


I raise my fist in a show of solidarity, something he responds to with a clenched fist of his own.


“Fuck right, I’ll keep up the good fight.”


Our interaction is interrupted by some commotion in the street. A late model Lexus has come upon the kids in the street playing roller hockey. My father, Griffin Stutters, has rolled down his window and is now voicing his displeasure with them having marked his path.


“Get out of the street you filthy maggots!”


One of the kids is bold enough to respond in kind.


“Hey, screw you Mister!”


My father smiles and revs his engine. When they still don’t move he shoots the car forward to within feet of the kids. Shrieks of horror fill the air as they drop their sticks and skate off toward their mothers who are so lost in their own gossip they are unaware of what has just happened.


Joy fills my father’s heart as he cackles loudly. He makes a wide turn into our driveway, making sure he runs over their hockey sticks in the process. The tires crush the sticks and simultaneously defeat the kids’ hope that my father would just move on to the driveway without any other unpleasant incident.


Griffin Stutters is not a warm man. I’m not sure if he was always such a chilly, morally bankrupt individual but I think at some point he realized that tapping into his deep reservoir of unpleasantness could propel him to great heights. At the very least, it has served him well professionally.


My father is a criminal defense lawyer. He excelled in college, receiving his Law degree from Berkeley in spite of, in his words, “the constant distraction from the weak, liberal retards that ruled the campus”.


After college my father started his own law firm, consisting of himself and a secretary. Devoid of a conscience or a soul, his firm grew so fast that within five years he was considered the top criminal defense lawyer in California. He considered himself the “people’s champion” as long as those people were murderers, rapists and pedophiles.


I remember in seventh grade, on Career Day, my father came to speak to my class just after he had finished a particularly high-profile case. In a controversial decision, my father had gotten a child rapist off on a technicality even though there was DNA evidence to support the prosecutor’s case.


When it was time for the question portion of Career Day, one of my classmates, Tommy Duncan, raised his hand eagerly. My father called on him, mistaking his eagerness for admiration.


My classmate pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and asked, “My mother wrote down a question she wanted me to ask you. “ How do you sleep at night you disgusting excuse for a human being?”


The whole class went silent and my teacher looked as if she was going to faint.


It made everyone uncomfortable except for my father. He simply smiled broadly and answered the question with aplomb.


“Well, Tommy, first of all thank you for the question. You can tell your mother that I sleep like a baby on a bed of heavenly clouds. I look at myself in the mirror every morning and smile because I am doing a job that I can be proud of. I defend the innocent, because after all, we are all innocent until proven guilty. You can tell your mother that I found her attempt to use her child to put me on the spot amusing.”


There was a brief silence as my father let Tommy process his answer. He then advanced a question at Tommy.


“Now Tommy, let me ask you something. Is your mother fat?”


My teacher gasped, which had mixed with some of the other kids snickering.


Tommy stuttered through an answer that, yes, his mother had struggled with some weight issues but was trying really hard to control it.


“I thought so Tommy. The question sounded like it had to come from a miserable fatty. Tell your fat mother good luck with her weight issue.”


The Q & A session ended there at the request of my horrified teacher as I sat with my head buried in my hands. What happened in the classroom that day is the best snapshot I can give you of what my father is like on a daily basis. Mean-spirited, smug and utterly shameful.


My father stands from his Lexus, his Armani suit perfectly tailored to fit his sinewy frame. He is a brooding, handsome man; a perfect complement to my mother’s beauty.


I often wonder why, with their combined good looks, I received such the short end of the stick. It’s as if, when his sperm connected with my mother’s eggs, there was an angry fight between the two, and I was the unfortunate aftermath of the melee.


I think that my father secretly loathes me because I am mediocre looking and am as likely as Stephen Hawking to excel in a sport.


“Hey Dad. How was--”


Before I have a chance to finish, his perpetual ear ornament Bluetooth headset goes off, and he flies into legal jargon. The only words I understand are “that prick can stick his appeal where he takes it from his boyfriend”. Charming.


Seeing that he has finished, I try again.


“Sounds like you had--”


“Not now, Walter, it’s been a long day.”


My father moves on towards the front door, giving a cordial greeting to Patrick before he enters the house.


My father makes me feel as wanted as a herpes sore that has Chlamydia.