The End of a John C. Mayer Era
John C. Mayer, you are providing the Internet with more happiness than I’d ever thought possible from someone who emotes to his guitar and writes songs about wonderlands and bodies and previously made Aunt Becky want to vomit. I hope that you know, John C. Mayer, that in the minds of 95% of people I know, John C. Mayer, you and I will be forever linked. That, John C. Mayer, is your legacy. Apparently, it is mine, too.
I only wish, John C. Mayer, that I had chosen a better, more douchy target to use for Pulling a John C. Mayer, like Dave Matthews, whom I still hate with the fire of a thousand flaming STD’s. Because the more I think about you, John C. Mayer, the more I really do like you.
So, Pranksters, we’re still going strong with the John C. Mayering of the Internet. How could we not? (I’m still adding posts to the original John C. Mayer call for posts page, so please, leave comments, links and track-backs if you have not).
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I’ve gotten a couple of nervous comments about the new site, Band Back Together, and I wanted to make sure that you knew, Pranksters, that you are personally invited by me, Your Aunt Becky, to write there. A lot of the submissions that we’ve received thus far have been of stories that are very tragic and heartbreaking and I’m proud to have them over there as I think that the site is going to do so much good.
But.
I want you to know that even if your problems, your stories, don’t feel like they stack-up, and you don’t feel like they are as important as the ones you have read, you are wrong. I cannot begin to tell you how wrong you are.
Because you never know who is on the other end of that Google box, searching desperately for someone to connect with, someone who may have exactly the same problem that you face, and whether or not it’s “stacking up” against someone else, that’s not going to matter at all to the person on the other end.
And frankly, it doesn’t matter to anyone else either. This isn’t a Pain Olympics. There’s no judgment of who is more worthy of our sympathy and support. There’s no prize for Saddest Story.
We want your stories. We want you.
We’re none of us alone, remember. That includes you, not just the person who is deeper in the shit than you may be. Please, stop worrying about whether or not you deserve to be on the site because if you feel like you want to be there, you already belong there.
There’s light in every word, every single word you write, and somewhere, someone is reading what you say. You never know who is connecting with you and who you are helping when you open that blank document and start typing out your story. If one person – one single person – reads one post on the entire site and decides to get help, feels less alone, or makes a positive step, you know what?
We’ve done something good.
And there’s no way of measuring which post that is. It may be the one floating around your head. The one you’re afraid to write because you don’t think it’s enough. It is enough, Prankster.
So GO. And Write Hard, my Pranksters. Believe me, we want your stories. All of them. Old stuff, new stuff, any stuff you want to give us. We want you.
And while you’re there, please, pass on the word about the site.
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Friday, I sold my car.
Not my Honda Odyssey or my CR-V, but my Acura.
I’d been meaning to sell it for years. It’s been sitting in the garage, unused, since Alex was born. It was impractical for driving my two crotch parasites around. Shoving three of them in there was laughable.
But this was more than a car for me.
I am a wanderer. This car was my lifeline.
Nights when I couldn’t sleep, it was me and my red car, nothing but endless black sky above and the road slipping by under my wheels, the hum of the engine keeping me company as I shifted seamlessly from second to third, third to fourth and finally fourth to fifth gear. The car and I were one.
The discs in my CD changer would flip quietly to the next as they each finished their set and we’d drive on into the night, wandering. Just me on my red horse. The nights were silent then, peaceful, the green glow of the dashboard my only company as the wheels turned on and on, the road whispering, beckoning, just a little further, kid, what’s down here, let’s take this right, you haven’t been here before.
I had a baby. Another. Yet another. The nights were complicated, full of colicky babies and ghosts. My car cried from the garage, come on kid, let’s go out, let’s take the night back, reclaim it for our own, let’s wander, just you and me, for old time’s sake. I’m gassed up and ready for you, kid, and you need me. I know it.
And I did. I still do.
That life, I miss that life more than anything. The wanderer is in my bones. Staying home, being Mommy, that’s something I do, but it’s not what my soul cries for at night, when the hours yawn on, the numbers on the clock seem to stand still and the road beckons me like a siren.
The van is a van. The CR-V is a truck. They won’t know me. They can’t wander. They don’t hug the road like a tight red dress, screaming with pleasure as I power-shift from second to fourth. They’ll never beg me hey kid, take the long way or go down that road down that way just to see what’s down there.
Eventually, I’ll get another car and I’ll start wandering again. I can’t deny myself forever; it’s in my blood.
The red car went to someone who will love it and for that I am happy. But my heart, my heart is sad.
It still longs to wander.
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I finally got the links to my Ford Story: What Women Want interview, and it’s up over here, at We Know Awesome, if you want to take a listen. If I sound douchy, blame John C. Mayer and the tornado.
Ahh. I had a car like that. I cried and I cried and I cried when I finally had to let her go. Yes, her. She had a name. But someday the crotch parasites will be grown and we can roam again, right? Maybe in search of the party they are trying to pretend they’re not attending?
Yes. We will get those days back. Soon. I must get back to roaming soon.
I so used to do that when I was younger. drive at night. just drive until I felt better again. I lived in a desert back then and the road, in the middle of the night, was my own. and it stretched on an on. and it was dark. *sigh*
I am so planning on posting soon. hopefully. I promise. I am feeling a little overwhelmed by my own blog presently and with life. but I have a couple of posts in mind if I can find a minute. 🙂
I look forward to reading whatever you write whenever you manage it. No pressure.
And those nights that yawned on…I always did feel better. I wish I had anything that made me feel better now.
I didn’t have a car like that but I did cry when I left my first post-marriage apartment. That was the place where I got so much validation for myself, my own little safe space. I don’t miss it but I am grateful for it!
We all have those things, I guess. I’m not an overly sentimental person. I don’t like things, usually. But the car, I guess, is sometimes more than a car, huh?
I remember selling my hubby’s truck. He was so sad because that proved the end of his bachelor days. It was a beautiful blue truck that he had ordered brand new. His first and last “new” car purchase. The birth of kids proved far more expensive than he imagined. It was not pratical to drive everywhere with a huge carseat shoved between us.
He sold his Corvette to buy the land we now live on. Now, intead of a pretty blue truck, or that nice silver vette, he gets all excited over a new zero turn radius mower.
One day, I will get him a new corvette. It has to happen. He needs that ability to escape from his batshit crazy wife (me) and to feel free again. It’s his little red car.
That’s beautiful. You’re a wonderful wife. You really are.
I could’ve written the 2nd part of this myself, I traded my red 2000 Ford Escort ZX2 in on a Mazda MPV van last year. Thirteen months later and that sentence brings tears to my eyes. *sigh*
I could’ve written the 2nd part of this myself, I traded my red 2000 Ford Escort ZX2 in on a Mazda MPV van last year. Thirteen months later and that sentence brings tears to my eyes. *sigh*
I don’t think that goes away. I miss who that person, that free person was, I guess.
I haven’t had a car like that. I have mourned the loss of more friends and pets than I care to admit, though.
The car was freedom. It was the only thing that ever let me be me. The only consistency I ever had. I guess that’s what I miss.
I can’t stand Dave Matthews. I know it’s the cool thing to like Dave Matthews. At least it was in college. I don’t know if it is still. But I can’t stand that douche canoe. Or the so-called music he makes.
It’s not cool to like Dave Matthews any more unless you’re in college and all, Oh DAVE, I love you DAVE, I’m a FAKE HIPPIE and you’re DAVE!
That is a lot for one post…the car….the site….the Mayer. Stop the madness.
I won’t post at all tomorrow. Happy?
For even further proof that YOU are so completely full of the awesome, go over to Google and type Adam M. Lambert. You gotta get in the period. Anyway, you’ll see that I’m still going strong in the number three spot but if you look closely, you will see that pulling head in the number FIVE spot is none other than YOU Aunt Becky! You are coming up in my Adam M. Lambert spot on the Google Search! Did I pull a double John C. Mayer since YOU, Aunt Becky, and Adam M. Lambert come up? You’re amazing! Thanks for teaching us how Pull A John C. Mayer on the internet!
Also, I need to go submit one of many stories on the walls of your new home. Maybe we’ll find someone to connect with.
Dude, this is amazing that you pulled a double John C. Mayer without even realizing it because pulling a John C. Mayer is full of the awesome.
Now you can use your power of pulling a John C. Mayer for many other amazing Internetting adventures. Like John C. Mayer.
The kids do grow up eventually. After years of driving used/crappy cars, my husband got a Mercedes, a small one, but he said from the front they look the same and he got all the bells and whistles. Then I started whining about my car, and I got a metallic blue Acura, just with the some bells, no whistles. My favorite thing to do is when I’m tail-gated in the slow lane is to open up the moon-roof and windows,turn me on some Eminem or Kanye, blast it as loud as I can and give the finger to the jerk when he finally decides that he can drive around me. That’s when, no matter what problems I’m having,life feels good.
There’s nothing better than getting behind the wheel of a car you love and just opening up on the road. Looking forward to getting another red car.
Really? I need to put on my sad pants. I love DMB music, always have. I think their last album was the best they’d put out in years. But that’s me. *Puts on uncool pants* There, that’s more comfortable.
I am sorry for your loss. Sometimes I get glimpses of the girl who used to drive her little red car, radio blaring, who was so much more care free than this mother of three. It’s hard to find that person when there’s so much more demanding your time, but you know you haven’t changed. So you wait. I feel ya Aunt Becky. I’ll wait with you.
After I graduated from high school in ’95, the parents bought me a ’92 Acura Integra. My first 5-speed with a sunroof and a CD player; that baby took me to party w/my BFF at UCLA nearly every weekend for a good year…damn I thought I was hot shit back then! Kept it till I couldn’t fit any more car seats, then sold it for…yep, you guessed it…a gahdamn minivan!
Sometimes, late at night, I can hear my old 1980 gunmetal gray Buick Skylark calling me. “Remember how we drove across the country three times? Remember how my trunk had to be kept closed with bungee cords? Remember The Incident in Wyoming?”
I understand your yearning, My Aunt Becky. I miss that car.
i have to weigh in on the idea about not commenting over at band back together because you’re not fucked up enough, or your problems aren’t as bad as other people’s problems.
i read this in a book, and cannot for the life of me remember which one:
just because someone’s grandmother dies, that doesn’t meant you cannot be sad when your dog dies.
and it’s true. i was actually more upset when my dog died than when my grandmother did, but that’s another blog for another time. aunt motherfucking becky is right – there might be someone out there who’s dog has passed away, and wants to hear about YOUR experience when your dog died, not some bullshit about when my grandma died. someone out there might need YOUR BLOG POST.
and if you’re not sure, post it anonymously. i find that writing anonymously makes me care even less about what other people’s reactions to my writing are. just get it out of your gut and onto the screen.
love and light, bitches. <3
Amen! Just because there are deaf people with no kneecaps doesnt mean that your problems hurt less to YOU. And you shouldnt feel guilty for that.
My attachment to cars has a limited lifespan – they all start annoying me when they’re approximately 7 years old. I was very sad that I had to put my little convertible Eclipse up for sale due to a violation of one of Judge Judy’s rules (never cosign on a car loan for a loser boyfriend), but I ended up selling his shitty Civic first. Hurray! Also, maybe I should mushroom print that idiot who test drove my 5-speed and was clearly unaware of the use of brakes, since he fucking down-shifted every time he needed to slow down. Dumbass. Anyway, I traded the car in shortly after the clutch cable kept breaking and the roof started leaking. I wasn’t sad then…especially when the dealership gave me a good price for it sight unseen.
BTW, you have a passel of mini-pranksters to take with you on the road. Sure, they might be annoying, and the potty breaks will be frequent, and the minivan will not hug the curves at all…but there are wonders to be seen that you might not notice if you don’t have a crew to whom all things are new. So introduce them to adventuring on the open road.
I’m visiting via Semi-Slacker Mom, she emailed me about your Band Back Together site. I think that its amazing the thought and work you have completed to bring such a project to light. So, many need to know that they are alone in the struggles they face ~ and that no matter how big that mountain seems… they will succeeed!!
I invite you check out my blog at http://www.attiudeIVlife.blogspot.com
there are a couple tabs just under the header that give an overview of what I have been through…if you are interested in me writing something for Band Back Together ~ it would be my pleasure.
my email is : fallingoffahighheeledlife@gmail.com
Love the title of your blog …and its message .. I’m your newest follower!! HHL
You do not sound douchy.
In fact, hating Dave Mathews and saying things like the Pain Olympics makes me love you even more. That sounds kinda staker-ish, but I think you know what I mean.
Oooh, I forgot to mention that I hate DMB and his mind-numbingly boring non-music. I’d pick John C. Mayer running through the halls of high school and busting out the double doors any day.
I’ve been dreaming about a Mini Cooper that I could cruise with at my discretion with or without kids in tow. I’d definitely have my black dog on board hanging her big fat head out the window, because she’s a joyrider like that.
I made my husband buy the minivan so I wouldn’t have to. So he drives that, and I have a medium sized SUV, that only seats 5 that I really, really wanted. When we have to haul lots of kids around, it’s his job.
Score one for the Mamma.
I miss my Mustang. She left before kids were even born because the years had taken the toll but I want a Mustang again one day.
“Dave Matthews, whom I still hate with the fire of a thousand flaming STD’s.”
HOORAAAAYY! I still have so much hope left! I found another prominent and well respected person that thinks more of the dirt on their shoe than D!@# Matth@!# (I loathe him so much I refuse to spell his name unless it was copied and pasted) 🙂
Rock on Aunt Becky!
I miss my 2 seat Lotus which was sold to pay for an IVF cycle or two. The people carrier just ain’t the same.
Just finished reading your latest installment and I’m still quivering. First. What you had to say about “Band Back Together” was wonderful. Thank you. Everyone has a story to tell and I loved how you made it so clear. Perfect.
Second. Telling us about your beautiful red car made my crotch twitch remembering my very first escape ride. She was beautiful. A 1984 black Fiero (Shaddup; Yes I’m old) First one legally on the road up here in NH. I bullied the dealership into selling it to me hot off the showroom floor. It took them six months to get a replacement due to limited distribution. So there I was, driving a hot little number that nobody else had out on the road. I was some kind of hot shit who was frequently stopped in parking lots, shouted to at red lights, wooed, admired, and in friggin’ heaven. Never mind the first ones built turned out to have a little spontanous combustion issue. (“Go ahead and blow up baby, I’ll be right here with you when it happens”)
Eventually sold it. Mourned it. Drove boring sensible cars for years. But honey, those years will come back to you eventually. Promise. And when they do, you’ll be back on top in a new “tight red dress of a car screaming with pleasure as you power shift her from second to fourth”. God I love that line. You should get the fucking pulitzer for that one.
My current post is my last in the John C Mayering of Eminem. I’m almost positive that if I don’t stop now my friends and family are planning an intervention. I think the last straw was the fact that I made a YouTube video for this current post! thanks again for all the fun Aunt Becky! You’re a rock star. (I’ll still believe this when I’m in a padded cell)
[…] misunderstood and was under the impression that I wanted his fame. I do not. Just his love. Perhaps Mommy Wants Vodka can explain it to him. But Eminem (Marshall Bruce Mathers III) and I tried to talk it […]
“Because you never know who is on the other end of that Google box, searching desperately for someone to connect with, someone who may have exactly the same problem that you face…”
Right in the heart-part, you hit me. Oof.
xoxo
What up Aunt Beck? We pulled a John C. Mayer with Kate I. Gosselin and no luck. Any tips?
I hate to drive, but I loved to go clubbing. That’s kind of the same, right? So when my kid is old enough, I can go out and wear mini skirts and get wasted and . . . wait. That’s not the same at all.
Never mind.
I am sorry about your car sadness. The Hub and I are researching cars now and I CAN NOT wait to trade my car in for an awesome, balls-out, hauling machine that will hold my 40 & 80 lbs dogs, future spawns and all of the shit I like to pile in my car (currently, 14 sweatshirts and some spider killer spray). I am contemplating rhinestone covered hanging balls for the hitch…
that makes me miss my Civic Del Sol..it was red also. Nothing better than taking the top off cranking up some AC/DC and crusing down Ela Rd in Lake Zurich. Oh and by the way…Women that can drive stick..HOT!
Are you sure you’re not part Gypsy, Aunt Becky? I can relate, though I never had a wandering car. I just love to travel. I love the feeling of exploring new countries, learning about their customs, and seeing amazing things. Someday. After the crotch parasites are older and can stay with grandparents and such. Someday, maybe we’ll have the money to buy insanely expensive airline tickets. Someday, maybe my husband and I can take time off of the slave-driving jobs we both have. I will have my someday, or else!
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You are the one behind Band Back Together?! Let me say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! I tweeted it and sent out the link to friends who I think will really love it. BBT is the only site I’ve found that gathers mothers as real people and also doesn’t feel clique-ish. Brilliant. And congrats.
*blushes* AW. Thank you. I’m really, really proud of Band Back Together. Thank you SO much. Made my morning.