Scooter of Hope, Scooter of Change

I Hope Tomorrow Is Like Today - Guster (mp3)
Election Night - Broadway Calls (mp3)

“How’s all that hopin’ and changin’ workin’ out for ya?”

Transporting a full Grande Misto via scooter is no simple feat. Most scooters, mine included, come sans cup holder, sans trunk. I have two locations for storage on my Yamaha Riva: a very snug and teensy glove box set into the steering column, and my “hard case,” the roundish clamshell-looking contraption behind the seat.

Thanks to Starbucks stoppers -- I once called it a “Green Coffee Buttplug” and received very disappointed looks from the barista -- I have created the fairly reliable practice of scooting back to work with minimal spillage using some 10 napkins and cocooning the cup in the glove box, where it fits quite snugly.

That said, the process takes a few minutes. And it was in the midst of mummifying my coffee and nestling it into the glove that I heard, muffled through my helmet, the quote above. I looked up, and there was this older man, a little bit oily or sweaty, probably in his early 70s, smiling out of his Caddy. Or maybe it was an Oldsmobile. I’ve never been good with cars, but I know it was Amur’can.

Being clueless, I said, “Excuse me?” because the quote seemed without context. I was trying to connect his comments to my attempts to store coffee in a scooter.

And he repeated himself. “How’s all that hopin’ and changin’ workin’ out for ya?”

I still didn’t really get it. So I said, “Um, fine I guess.” And I smiled.

The man was shaking his head before I had even answered, with the same kind of smile I tend to have when I see some moron on the other side of the road driving without headlights after dusk. Then he pushed out a few of those annoyed chuckles before saying, “I’m glad I’ll be dead before I have to see this country go completely up in smoke.”

So, at that point, I finally got it. By then, this old dude has rolled up his window and pulled out of his spot. Off, I guess, to sneer at other young fools and their idiotic notions of hope and change, preferably from the comfort of his enclosed air-conditioned American-made isolation chamber.

My scooter has seven stickers. Three are UNC-related. One is the ubiquitous Apple logo. One is for a band called The Rescues. Another is for the Good People Brewing Company of Alabama. And one is for the Chattanooga Football Club. None of these are of a remote political nature. I’m not much of one for political signs, because I tend to think religion and politics carry too much negative energy in first impressions. And, in those rare moments when either topic creates positive impressions, it’s at the expense of those who don’t belong to your imaginary club.

I don’t think anyone looks at my Good People Brewing Company sticker and thinks, “Ahh, a fellow beer drinker. We’re better than those snotty wine-drinking assholes.” No one sees my Chattanooga FC sticker and thinks, “Fuck the Titans and their oblong monstrosity!”

But put a cross, or a fish, or a “W” or an “O” on your vehicle, and you are painting a double-yellow line in the road that says, “You’re either on my side and going in the (proper) direction, or you’re not.”

Nothing too wrong with talking politics and religion, but not on a first date, and certainly not with people you haven’t even met yet.

This old man made an assumption: youngish coffee-drinking asshole on a nerdy scooter = Obama voter. That he was right makes him more lucky than brilliant. That he looks forward to dying before the US sinks into some Muslim apocalypse makes him exactly the kind of conservative that makes lots of people despise conservatives. (Just a reminder that I’m plenty guilty of this prejudgement habit.)

Why would someone be anti-change? As a species, we talk all the time about how dangerous it is to forget our past, yet so many of us use words like “tradition” and “the good ol’ days” without the slightest bit of irony. Tradition is for Druids. Want tradition? Go to a 3rd world Muslim country, because they’re steeped in tradition so ancient it would knock your great-great-granddaddy’s socks off. But in America? Seriously? Tradition for us is, like, McDonalds french fries. Or something even more shameful like watching an evening news program together as a family while eating TV dinners on TV trays.

As a country, very little of our history is based on anything BUT change.

But I get the whole anti-change thing. We get older. We wish Peter Gabriel and REM still ruled the music landscape. We detest those wacky R&B people with their wacky R&B booties and def cuts. We detest Faith Hill for being twice as hot and half as talented as Loretta Lynn. I get it. It’s kinda goofy, but with every passing year, I find myself fighting that very instinct to wish things were more like they Used Ta Be.

So it sucks to be anti-change, but it’s also an absurd curse of human nature.

But here’s what would really really suck: to be “Anti-Hope.” To be the person who is opposed, politically or otherwise, to hope. I’d like to think that one could be reasonably opposed to Obama and the Democratic Party without being Anti-Hope. Obama didn’t trademark the word. He doesn’t own it. I’m rooting for the guy, but even if you don’t want to, please don’t be against Hope.

Trust me. You don’t want to be that old man in the Oldsmobile. It’s not a happy or contented life.