My Secret Life

My Secret Life as a Car
by Jack Stilborn

Featured in Blank Spaces, June 2025, Vol. 9, Issue 4, pp 32-34

Jimmy never told me what he was. I never told him what I was either, or anybody else. We had being cars in common and that was enough to keep us going each recess. Enough to give us something to do on the playground while other boys played football.

Mostly, we’d race. I was usually a Dodge. My dad and uncles all had Dodges, so that was what it felt right for me to be. And, that year, Chrysler had been advertising something called a Power Pack that gave their engines a surge of power, at least in the ads. I had the Power Pack and most of the time that was enough to blow the doors off Jimmy.

Jimmy’s losses were partly self-inflicted. Whatever kind of car he was, it needed to make a lot of noise. I respected that. You had to. Jimmy would be going ‘rrrrmmmmm,’ ‘rrrrrmmmmm’ while he was trying to run and making another noise through closed lips that generated a lot of saliva and sounded like ‘bbbzzzm-mmpppp.’ A lot of Jimmy’s oxygen intake was going into noise and not so much into running. He might stay with me while I was in first, but when I went into second and the Power Pack kicked in, he’d be in my rear view mirror whenever I had one.

But that wouldn’t always be the end of it. The Dodges were conspicuously soft sprung in the front that year. If I hit a bump on the playground, or ran through a low spot, I’d get bouncing in the suspension and it could get out of control pretty quickly. Up and down, up and down, I’d go.

Higher and higher and lower and lower. Soon I’d be trying to run in a semi-squat position and then, after almost falling, I’d be floating up and running with my feet practically off the ground. Totally airborne sometimes. I’d seen cars that way on TV so I knew it could happen.

There Jimmy would be. Right behind and me and gaining. ‘Rrrrrrmmmmmmm!’ ‘Bbbbzzzzmmmpppp!’ Sometimes he’d get me. It was always bad when a Dodge got taken out, but at least it kept Jimmy playing.

Better to lose a few than end up standing around.

I sometimes used another one that felt like a pick-up truck but actually didn’t look like a truck at all. It was more like a heavy steel frame, two rails and a cross member, surging along above the ground. It made me feel powerful, like a giant metal ram punching through the air, indestructible and nothing could stop me. That one would have been great for playing football, but Jimmy and I didn’t play football. I could run or catch things, but not both at the same time. Jimmy couldn’t catch at all.

The Dodge’s front end was also a problem in football. I had played for a while in the spring, but when I would finally get the ball, the playground wasn’t very flat so I’d hit a bump or a low spot and that front end would start bouncing. It might have been weak shocks or just springs that were too soft, maybe. Either way, I’d end up trying to run the ball half the time in a semi-squat and half the time with my feet off the ground. The other team would be stampeding after me and, before I knew it, I’d be tagged. My team wouldn’t be too happy about that.

“What do you think you’re doing?” they’d yell.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” they’d yell if the teacher wasn’t there. “Are you here to play football or bounce up and down like an idiot!”

So, mostly Jimmy and I would play by ourselves. Eventually, the recess bell would ring and in we’d go. Usually I’d park the Dodge when I went into to the school because it just seemed more like an outdoor car. You couldn’t use the speed in a classroom, with all the desks and chairs. Not to mention the teacher standing there.

One of my other cars was European; a smaller car, slower but also a lot easier to manoeuvre in a classroom. It had soft leather seats that you could smell when the windows were down if you stuck your head in. It barely had enough power to get out of its own way, or at least that’s what my dad always said about them. So, when I’d be in a line going down the hall to school assembly, there was often a problem keeping up. The gap between me and the student in front would grow and grow, even when I had it floored. Sometimes the teacher would be onto me for that.

Those cars were narrow and fairly high so they tended to lean badly in corners. It was awkward going around corners in the classroom while leaning to the outside because that usually meant I lost my balance and staggered into a desk or something. I even fell on a girl once. I had to stay after school for not paying attention and the teacher asked me if I was feeling alright and did I ever have any headaches.

My main headache was having to go to school and be in a class-room but I didn’t say that.

At home, I’d be going up to my bedroom and we had a stairwell that had a pretty good echo in it. I’d pound my feet on the stairs and get a sound just like the big black Mercury the guy down the street drove. He’d take it easy until he got away from his mom’s house and then floor it just as he went by our place. That big eight would practically bellow at you, you could just feel the power. So I’d be the Mercury going up the stairs and I’d just take off, rocketing up the stairwell on a wave of sound.

That always felt pretty good except by then my dad would be home trying to have a nap on the living room couch. He’d be yelling at me: “How many times do I have to tell you!” The Mercury was trouble, the biggest and loudest car on the street with a bright red interior and usually the radio blasting away, floored out down a street that mainly had families living on it with kids in the yards. You couldn’t really keep the power in when you hit the stairs, so basically I’d floor it to get ahead of the “how many times do I have to…” and all that.

Once I heard Mom and Dad talking in quiet voices about me and school and how something had to be done. The next thing I knew, Mom was taking me to the doctor for some kind of testing. Doctor Kinkaid didn’t ask questions. He gave orders. My mom had always been a bit afraid of him since he threw a kid’s shoes across the waiting room once and told the mother to get him shoes that fit properly. Anyway, he told me to walk around the table in his office as fast as I could and stood there with his arms folded, watching. I had lots of options, including a Corvette that was perfect for any kind of twisty road and gobbled up corners like nothing. So around and around the table I went, almost sliding in my sock feet but totally in control, just like the Vettes I’d seen racing on TV.

Doctor Kinkaid put me on the examining table, checked my eyes and ears and tapped my knees for reflexes in about two seconds it seemed. “Nothing wrong with this kid,” he said to my mother. “He’s a kid. You never know what they’re up to. Get him out of here!”

Things went back to normal for a while, until the teacher brought a new girl into the class. Her name was Cynthia, not like the other girl’s names. When I said Cynthia to myself it made me think of soft pillows, or maybe waves gently washing onto a beach. The teacher put her in a desk between mine and the window so whenever I’d be looking out the window, which was most of the time, I’d find myself looking at Cynthia. She had long blonde hair that looked like gold when the sunlight from the window came streaming through it. Pretty soon I was walking Cynthia home. I kept the cars out of it while Cynthia was around. I started to forget about them in other places too.

Then, one day, Cynthia told me her family was moving at the end of the month. When the end of the month came, that was exactly what happened. So there I was, more or less back where I’d been.

The cars started showing up again but not as often as before. I might use one for going up the stairs at home or running the 60-yard dash at a field meet. Otherwise, there seemed to be more and more things to think about that weren’t cars, and more things that I didn’t need a car to do. Gradually, the cars began to go away.

But not completely.

They’ve never gone away completely.

It is enough, now, just to be near them. Enough to be standing by the roadside as a rally of antique cars passes by, each one majestic. A massive car from the late 1920s heaves itself into sight, devouring road, roaring past me. The song of combustion fills my ears, the tang of it is in my nostrils. Straining against an inclining road, exhaust booming, supercharger whining, it is a symphony of pumps and gears and rushing air. It is the golden age of cars, hurtling away from me.

It shrinks into the distance. The sound deepens and fades, becoming memory even as I stand there, the immediacy of it leeching away. Leeching away into time. All of it, how it felt and what it was like, fading away. You can hear the extinction in it now, a way of life that is ceasing to be.