Goodbye Old Friend

I just shed a tear for a beautiful piece of machinery. When the Geeley scooter we used during college quit working Conrad and Jeff took some tools to it. After a few hours and a now heap of junk later, they decided it would cost more to fix it than it was to buy it to begin with. So we let it sit in the garage in a puddle of oily grease until recently when I decided to clean the garage and get rid of old stuff.

Really I had wanted it to go to a salvage yard. I hate to see all that usefulness go to waste. But in a moment of decisiveness, and wanting to just get it taken care of, and not worry about it any longer, I arranged to have it picked up with the weekly trash.

I almost didn't watch when the trash man came by. But I had to farewell it so I looked out the window as he lifted it and scooted it over the crushing threshold. And tears stung my eyes for the knowledge of lost potential. I watched the compacter crush it and I regretted tossing it. If I could do it again I would have called 'this and that' number and I would have found a better place for it. But as it is, it sits broken and future-less in a field of hopelessly abandoned trash that no one will ever care about or make good use of.

There's no looking back though. I can't live in regret over it. I saved its mini sized license plate. Maybe I'll hang it somewhere in memory of what once was.