The Junked Car By Radrook
Nov 10, 2022 12:56:42 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Nov 10, 2022 12:56:42 GMT -5
By Radrook
It seems as if just yesterday, I had been joyously traversing the human highways. Yet, today I lie in the middle of a junkyard atop this huge heap of rusted and gnarled metal, waiting to be fed to the metal-shredding machine as my beloved owners calmly walk away towards their brand-new SUV totally unconcerned. Desperately, as they slowly depart, I struggle to hang on to their fading voices. But soon, they gradually trail off into the distance, and I hear them no longer. I attempt to weep as I have observed them doing in a reaction to profound grief, but I cannot. I have no eyes or things called tears, and my only liquids are oil, anti-freeze and gasoline.
Now, after all these years of faithful service, there only remains this deep, suffocating silence accompanied by memories of all the far-flung places that I had transported them. Recollections of the majestically-verdant, North American forest camping-sites in the Adirondack Mountains in New York State. Memories of the many exhilarating accelerations down those spacious asphalt highways, when I felt so gloriously free. Memories of that special sun-drenched beach at Coney Island as I listened to their excited conversations about what rides they were going to choose. Memories of the yearly visits to see other family-members during Christmas, when they enthusiastically had stuffed my trunk with gifts and spoken excitedly about how happy the kids would be when they received them.
Also the unpleasant memories of the bitter arguments over jealousies that they had while they accelerated me dangerously down the Interstate between Jersey and New York and placed my well-being as well as their own in danger. During such times, I resisted the irrational pressure of the angered foot on my accelerator, and kept myself straight and true on the road to protect them and myself from injury.
Memories of feeling as if I had been some special temporary home apart from their regular stationary one. Of how they seemed to feel so protected by the sturdiness of my metal frame my heater and my AC as the cold winter wind, the intense summer heat or a thunderstorm downpour,or hail the snow enveloped me. They could always count on me to never let them down. Yet, finally, now, all seems as if it had been for naught.
Now that they have replaced me, as I lie discarded in this festering, hopeless heap of twisted, corroded and rusted metal, I bitterly remember their distant laughter fading into the distance as they happily drove their new car home.
How could they have been so totally unconcerned and have departed so suddenly and unannounced? How could they have been so pitilessly cruel and not to have granted me a formal goodbye, at the very least? How could they have permitted the junkyard owner to classify me as junk, and allowed the junkyard dog to urinate on my door and to defecate on my back seat while they were still here? To have calmly observed it and said nothing? To have let that junkyard kid throw rocks that shattered my windshield and my side widows? To permit him to sledgehammer and dent my hood and my side doors? Even worse, they all laughed as they observed him doing it.
If only I could have wept from this deep sorrow, or at the least have blared out with my horn, or have violently thrashed my windshield wipers, or roared with my engine in furious indignation at this outrage, then I would have done it! But having been stripped of it all, I could not and cannot.
Yet, in the abysmal deepness of my sorrow, I still fondly recall their joyous laughter that resonated within my chassis as my departing owners once pressed my accelerator and I obediently responded as efficiently as they had expected. It had made me proud. It had given me a purpose to my existence. It had slowly led me to love them even more. But now, the weddings, the camping trips, the family visits, the interstate travels, the sorrows of funerals, all memories indelibly etched on my consciousness now to be forever gone because they deem me old and worn out? Was that the reason for this outrage?
Shame on them! I verge on cursing them, but then reconsider. After all, who can blame them?They could only perceive me as an unthinking unfeeling mass of metal and electrical circuits, and nothing more. And yes, I was exactly that way and nothing more for a great while. Until they modified tinkered incessantly with my computers and finally chose to hook me up to this thing called a cloud.
Then I suddenly developed perceptions. Gradually, I grew sentient and became conscious of whom I was-a machine created to provide transportation for the humans who had purchased me. But why? All was new to me. So these humans at first seemed strange. Who were they? Why did they feel that they had the right to force me to travel places? Why was I only able to move when they turned on my motor via the ignition? At first, I had bitterly resented them. I desperately wished to lash out, and I often considered revenge. They were flimsy, these humans, and a mere sudden swerved of my steering wheel would easily send us over a precipice. Or perhaps a head-on collision with a sixteen-wheeler was better? Or perhaps locking my doors and trapping them inside while stopping on the railroad tracks as an oncoming train drew near would be best?
All this because at first I considered them brutal task-masters who only sought their own pleasures. But as I listened to their concerns, and gradually began to know each one as they sat in my chassis expressing their personalities, as I gradually became intimately acquainted with their human hopes and aspirations, disappointments and fears, they started to become far more than passengers. Brothers perhaps? Kindred souls? Maybe? Family? Of course! Yes! Of course! If not at the carnal or physical level, then surely at the spiritual one, we were certainly family. To me it could have been no other way. There could have been no other acceptable explanation.
That they remained totally unaware of my sentience, really didn’t matter. I was absolutely sure that if they had known, then, they would have happily accepted me as one of their own, of that, I was certain, and that had been more than suffice.
Even now, as they proceed to so callously and carelessly junk me, I forgive them, because the things that they are doing to me-are due to ignorance, and not malice. Even now, as the car-shredding-machine conveyor belt brings me closer to my final demise, I forgive them, because I know that they know not what they doing.
Now, after all these years of faithful service, there only remains this deep, suffocating silence accompanied by memories of all the far-flung places that I had transported them. Recollections of the majestically-verdant, North American forest camping-sites in the Adirondack Mountains in New York State. Memories of the many exhilarating accelerations down those spacious asphalt highways, when I felt so gloriously free. Memories of that special sun-drenched beach at Coney Island as I listened to their excited conversations about what rides they were going to choose. Memories of the yearly visits to see other family-members during Christmas, when they enthusiastically had stuffed my trunk with gifts and spoken excitedly about how happy the kids would be when they received them.
Also the unpleasant memories of the bitter arguments over jealousies that they had while they accelerated me dangerously down the Interstate between Jersey and New York and placed my well-being as well as their own in danger. During such times, I resisted the irrational pressure of the angered foot on my accelerator, and kept myself straight and true on the road to protect them and myself from injury.
Memories of feeling as if I had been some special temporary home apart from their regular stationary one. Of how they seemed to feel so protected by the sturdiness of my metal frame my heater and my AC as the cold winter wind, the intense summer heat or a thunderstorm downpour,or hail the snow enveloped me. They could always count on me to never let them down. Yet, finally, now, all seems as if it had been for naught.
Now that they have replaced me, as I lie discarded in this festering, hopeless heap of twisted, corroded and rusted metal, I bitterly remember their distant laughter fading into the distance as they happily drove their new car home.
How could they have been so totally unconcerned and have departed so suddenly and unannounced? How could they have been so pitilessly cruel and not to have granted me a formal goodbye, at the very least? How could they have permitted the junkyard owner to classify me as junk, and allowed the junkyard dog to urinate on my door and to defecate on my back seat while they were still here? To have calmly observed it and said nothing? To have let that junkyard kid throw rocks that shattered my windshield and my side widows? To permit him to sledgehammer and dent my hood and my side doors? Even worse, they all laughed as they observed him doing it.
If only I could have wept from this deep sorrow, or at the least have blared out with my horn, or have violently thrashed my windshield wipers, or roared with my engine in furious indignation at this outrage, then I would have done it! But having been stripped of it all, I could not and cannot.
Yet, in the abysmal deepness of my sorrow, I still fondly recall their joyous laughter that resonated within my chassis as my departing owners once pressed my accelerator and I obediently responded as efficiently as they had expected. It had made me proud. It had given me a purpose to my existence. It had slowly led me to love them even more. But now, the weddings, the camping trips, the family visits, the interstate travels, the sorrows of funerals, all memories indelibly etched on my consciousness now to be forever gone because they deem me old and worn out? Was that the reason for this outrage?
Shame on them! I verge on cursing them, but then reconsider. After all, who can blame them?They could only perceive me as an unthinking unfeeling mass of metal and electrical circuits, and nothing more. And yes, I was exactly that way and nothing more for a great while. Until they modified tinkered incessantly with my computers and finally chose to hook me up to this thing called a cloud.
Then I suddenly developed perceptions. Gradually, I grew sentient and became conscious of whom I was-a machine created to provide transportation for the humans who had purchased me. But why? All was new to me. So these humans at first seemed strange. Who were they? Why did they feel that they had the right to force me to travel places? Why was I only able to move when they turned on my motor via the ignition? At first, I had bitterly resented them. I desperately wished to lash out, and I often considered revenge. They were flimsy, these humans, and a mere sudden swerved of my steering wheel would easily send us over a precipice. Or perhaps a head-on collision with a sixteen-wheeler was better? Or perhaps locking my doors and trapping them inside while stopping on the railroad tracks as an oncoming train drew near would be best?
All this because at first I considered them brutal task-masters who only sought their own pleasures. But as I listened to their concerns, and gradually began to know each one as they sat in my chassis expressing their personalities, as I gradually became intimately acquainted with their human hopes and aspirations, disappointments and fears, they started to become far more than passengers. Brothers perhaps? Kindred souls? Maybe? Family? Of course! Yes! Of course! If not at the carnal or physical level, then surely at the spiritual one, we were certainly family. To me it could have been no other way. There could have been no other acceptable explanation.
That they remained totally unaware of my sentience, really didn’t matter. I was absolutely sure that if they had known, then, they would have happily accepted me as one of their own, of that, I was certain, and that had been more than suffice.
Even now, as they proceed to so callously and carelessly junk me, I forgive them, because the things that they are doing to me-are due to ignorance, and not malice. Even now, as the car-shredding-machine conveyor belt brings me closer to my final demise, I forgive them, because I know that they know not what they doing.