Micah McClarty

Thank you, Sparky, for over a year of being mine.

Dear Sparky,

I fell in love with you the moment I saw you. It was almost cinematic—your previous owner’s garage opened with a sluggish pace, only to reveal the shining, red beauty that is now my 2011 Mini Cooper. 

Was. 

You now sit lonely and abandoned in a half-empty car lot, waiting to be fixed. Unfortunately, that day will never come, at least not by my doing, because I was never truly in love with you. I liked the idea of having a cute car, all to myself. I liked how it looked.

I didn’t care about how much more I had to slow down on the school parking lot’s comically large speed bumps. I didn’t care about how I could only fit three friends inside, and uncomfortably so. All I cared about was your shiny red finish and your concentric dashboard. I loved how it looked.

But the price of making you new again is too weighty, and futile at that. Even if you didn’t break down last week, you would within a year or two. So I might as well say goodbye now.

Goodbye to not having to worry about parking. Goodbye to waiting a million years for the windshield to defrost. Goodbye to being recognizable wherever I went; goodbye to the suffocating lack of space. Goodbye to the curious brotherhood that Mini Cooper owners seem to enjoy.

I wasn’t sad when my dad told me you were gone for good. I think because I knew my love for you was surface level, and chipping like the paint on your passenger door. But I wish you the best. I wish I could have treated you better—more pickleball trips, fewer dents. Fewer nights spent up way past my bedtime.

I remember driving you for the first time. Your previous owner handed me the key fob, decorated with Mini-themed charms. I soon made it my own, adding a Batman LEGO and lanyard, a ladybug, and my wallet. I’m taking these trinkets, these experiences, with me, including yours. I’m glad I got to experience you. But you and I both know that I was never truly in love with you.

The truth is, I don’t think I’ll ever fall in love with a car. I’ve given up. Perhaps, one day, I’ll find one that makes me change my mind. Perhaps it will find me. Then, I imagine, I will discover that it really isn’t about cars at all. Then I will discover that love will only find me when I am not looking for it in a hunk of metal, rubber, oil, and red paint. In immature love and being “known.”

But maybe I will never find it at all. There can be no hope without the existence of doubt. That’s the thrill of it, the beauty. 

Best wishes, hopes, and dreams,

Micah