My 50th birthday arrived last week, the final goodbye to any illusions of youth. However, lately I've been feeling 17 again after buying what some are calling my "mid-life crisis"...a 2000 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP. My excitement and affection for the car are very similar to how I felt about the 1969 GTO I bought as a teen. Some similarities...both cars were at least 10 years old when I bought them, both are Pontiacs with "GT" in their names, and both are lethally fast. The GTO was fast in a muffler-bellowing tire-smoking way, while the GTP is silently, elegantly swift like a Japanese bullet-train. And it has so many nice options like fog lights, heads-up display that projects the speedometer onto the windshield, sun-roof, leather, Bose stereo and more. Plus it's a Daytona 500 Pace Car Edition, so it has a unique spoiler and air dams on the roof, and working hood scoops feeding air to the supercharger. I am now tempted to park the "silver bullet" at an angle, far away from the other cars, like I used to with the GTO in the back row of the Lincoln High School parking lot in Bloomington. To help facilitate the purchase, I sold the old, dependable Honda Accord station Wagon that Sharon and I purchased in anticipation of our marriage and the needs of my 6 and 9 year old sons in 1997. The kids grew up in that car, which we took on family vacations to Thunder Bay and the Wisconsin Dells, and Sharon and I took to St. Louis and Memphis. It hauled hundreds of bags of leaves to the brush site, a treadmill, a snow blower and much more. Both my kids learned how to drive behind the wheel of the Honda. It will stay in the family, however, because I sold it to my niece to be used for her son Zach's first car. The Honda has a lot of miles and a lot of memories, and I'm glad it will provide joy and reliable transportation to someone else.
