English 101 - Essay 3 - The Object

                                                    My Little Green Car

Careening down the road going faster as landmarks all around me lose focus or racing around an unknown racetrack where speed and control were most essential, these were the imaginings of a six year old as I push my little green car around the floor of my house.  This die-cast car with its many scratches and on again, off again tires was, for a time and weird to say, my best friend growing up.

The car was about 2 1/2  inches long and about 1 1/2 inches wide from wheel to wheel.  It was painted with a deep, bold, chilling green probably adopted from the famous British Racing green.  It resembled the Lotus brand Indy type cars of the early 60's with its scooped front and road-hugging silhouette.  With a pencil like body and an eight cylinders rear engine seemingly the size of half the car and exhausts that flared out past the frame, it exuded power as I pictured it going down the road.

You could almost smell the petrol spewing on the ground.

The thin black plastic wheels were attached by two nail-like wires, both front and back.  The rubber tires were on but without much grip and as you give it any kind of pressure, they would come off and you were constantly fiddling with each tire, trying to find the right combination of grip and placement.

The driver cockpit looked like a hollowed out plastic bathtub with a silver coated steering wheel.  There was not much detail in either the seat or dashboard but it stoked the imagery of 200 miles per hour on the speedometer.

Christmas 1962 was a truly wonderful day.  In the Philippines, most of toys at that time were handmade either of cheap plastic or dried out wood.  They weren’t very well made or visually appealing but that’s all the kids had to play with.   Sometimes we made our own toys, using our endless imagination, like boats and cars made out popsicle sticks or using place mat strings and plastic bags to make an improvised parachute.

But these toys either broke, got misplaced and never bother to be searched, or just plain boring.    It was rare to get a toy that was so cool and well made but that’s just what I got that Christmas morning.  Nothing special, my parents thought, about the little green car they presented me.  I fell in love with it as soon as I started playing with it.  I don’t even remember the other gifts I received that day because it did not matter, I just wanted to play with my new favorite toy.

My house was a two story 5 bedroom home, very spacious, well lit and many large windows which let in the cool air.  It had concrete steps supported by a steel girders and at the bottom of the stairs was a sloping white marble landing that was about five feet wide and three feet long and 5 inches high.  At the edge of the landing was a sharp  angled slope that melted into the floor.  This landing became my personal sand box, my exclusive playground, my very own road and track.  I would lay on my stomach pushing the car thinking about new lands I would reach. Obstacles were created for the car to navigate around and through and every passing moment made my car more invincible.  I would take other plastic or wooden cars and race them against my car but always making sure that it would win and if didn’t win, then I would race them again giving my car a slight advantage.  Cheating yes, but I didn’t care.  Hours and days on end were spent on the floor just looking at the car,  thinking how beautiful it was.

Anything I did, even playing with neighborhood kids, my mind was always on my car and longing to play with it again.  Dinner came and the car would be in my pocket.  Bedtime was another time for adventure. Deep folds in the blankets created an off-road track as I envisioned my car jumping over the sand dunes of the Sahara.  Many a time, my mom would yell at me go to sleep as I stayed up late into the night.

It may seem strange how a six year old boy could be obsessed about an object.  But it was more than that.  Being an only child, the car became my brother, my sister, my friend, my companion.  Looking back I should have been less concerned about the car but in 1962, in my fantasy world, I was always the hero in every adventure zooming around the world in my little green car.