Got Jesus?

When I was 16 years old, my sister, Christi, was 20 and was going through an atheist or agnostic period of her life and wanted absolutely nothing to do with any religion, God, Jesus, or anything of the sort. This info will come in handy later.

Along with her dislike of religious things, apparently she hated WD-40, oil changes, car washes and windshield wipers, too. Her Jeep Wrangler, purchased less than two years prior, was in a sad, pathetic state because Christi is notorious for running her cars into their early graves.

She was having trouble with something in her steering mechanism, so she asked if my dad and I would take a look and help her out. We agreed. Saturday morning arrived and Christi showed up at the house with her friend, Chance, driving behind her in his car. She walked in, gave us the keys and said, "Thanks guys, I'll be back later to pick it up."

"What?" my dad responded, irritated but not surprised. "You're not staying to help us fix your car?"

"Why would I stay?" she asked.

"Because it's your car!"

"But we already made plans. Sorry. See ya!"

And off she went, leaving us with her mess to clean up. Like I mentioned before, she never used to take care of her cars, so of course nothing went according to plan. We tried to get her tire off, but it was so rusted on from years of neglect that not even our most powerful tools could get it off. We ended up taking it to a tire store to try their luck. After 20 minutes, they determined the lugnuts would have to be cut off and the studs replaced. Figures. We then went to Autozone to buy new studs. While we were standing in line, I decided to rummage through the 99-cent bin that's filled with crap they can't otherwise sell.

And then I spotted my sweet revenge for my sister's abandonment. The perfect bumper sticker.

I showed my dad and you could tell we were thinking the exact same thing. When we finally finished her car seven hours later, we added the finishing touch. We attached the sticker to her bumper to inquire of those driving behind her if they, too, "had jesus." We drove it back home and Christi never noticed.

Until three days later.

I remember it was a sunny day and I was standing in the kitchen getting a drink. That's when I heard Christi barrel into the driveway going 30 mph and I saw her slam her door with a hellish scowl  on her face. I looked immediately at her bumper and the sticker was gone.

"Oh. No. Here. It. Comes."

Quickly, I thought of escaping, but it was too late, she had already seen me. She threw open the door.

"What in the HELL is this?!" She held up the sticker. I felt the obligation to stand my ground, to take responsibility for my prank, to be a man. But my heart didn't communicate with my mouth quickly enough.

"I don't even know. Dad did it."

Betrayer! Traitor! Saboteur!

But my treason may have saved my life that day. She stormed downstairs to my dad's office and I heard my dad start laughing. Then I saw Christi fly up the stairs.

"You blame him! He blames you! I guess it magically showed up then!"

And with that, she was gone. Apparently, she didn't find the joke as funny as we did.

The Guys' Spot

If I learned anything from my dad, it was a love for cars - all types. When we would drive together, he would always point out cool cars and tell me some interesting fact or tidbit he knew about it. I remember one Sunday, when I was really young, he took me up to the Concours d'Elegance car show at the University of Utah. I had no idea what it was, but I remembered the cool posters from past car shows my dad had hung up in our garage. Plus, I got out of going to church, so life was good.

Anyway, that love of cars stuck with me as I grew older and could finally work on them with my dad. We rented out a double storage unit and converted it into an auto shop. It was somewhere we could go to hang out and get away from the girls. It was definitely a man zone - we'd work on cars and get greasy, then stop for dinner and eat with greasy hands. We didn't care, we were men!

My dad and I would go there often just to spend time together. We would work on cars, but, more importantly, it gave us a chance to talk and really know each other during my teenage years when it's so easy to drift apart. It was there that we talked about high school and its ups and downs. It was there that he prodded me for details about my first kiss. It was there that we talked about college and my future and girls and dating and love and cars and people we hate and people we love and how can I listen to crappy music nowadays and how hot Kate Beckinsale was and how hot Olivia Newton John wasn't (much to my father's shagrin). I took girlfriends there, I spent time alone there, I studied for AP exams there.

It was a special place and I miss it. And I miss him.

No Football For This Guy

My parents never allowed me to play football, much to the shagrin of myself and my uncle, who protested strongly and made every case for its ultimate benefit in my life. Every year, the arguments would begin anew with the additional evidence that I was then a year older than the last discussion. Yet, year after year, my parents displayed a unified front against the pigskin and I was never placed in pads.

At the time, it seemed as though both my mom and dad were conspiring against me, both with an eye toward ruining my entire childhood experience, or so I thought. I could not understand it. "Dad," I would plead internally, "what about the 'man code?' Why are you siding with a girl over me?" Albeit that girl was my mother and his wife. In my 8-year-old world of mutual exclusivity where boys ruled and girls drooled, I couldn't understand my father's treason. What did Cindy - my mother who lost that title of respect when she decided to start destroying my paternal alliances - have on him? What didn't I know? There had to be more to the story. My world was collapsing around me. If the "man code" was no longer applicable, what else wasn't true? Is my name really Trent? Am I even your son?! Do I even exist?!!

"We don't want you to get hurt."

And there it was: the eternal parent's response. I felt just like Ralphie in "A Christmas Story" when his parents deny him a Red Ryder BB Gun because they fear that he'll "shoot his eye out." What fatalists. That's a quitter's attitude. Yes, I could get hurt playing football, but I could also contract pneumonia and have my toes turn black and crash into the Andes Mountains and have the entire Argentinian Rugby team eat me, too. It's true. I read it. In a book. Look it up. Their reasoning was severely flawed, so I decided it was my job, no, it was my duty to set them straight. In that I was the smartest 8-year-old I knew, I decided to present them with reasoning so sound that nobody could deny it.

"No."

Well, they didn't have to be so brutal about it.

"We signed you up for soccer."

"Soccer? But I want to hit people."

Apparently, my motives weren't pure enough for them. Their move proved very wise because soccer became my life and I'm grateful they signed me up despite my protestations. As I grew older, it became clear that my dad wasn't a sworn enemy of football. He played football in high school. He loved football. He even snuck me out of church one Sunday per year just so I could watch the pre-game show for the Superbowl.

I wondered for years why my dad was against me playing football, but I think I've begun to understand now that I'm married: my mom was against me playing football. I'm sure my mom had serious reservations about my participation in football because she had seen too many injuries and didn't want me to get hurt. Understandable. I wonder if my dad wanted me to play, or at least was not opposed to it. Either way, one thing was clear: he loved my mom. He loved her enough to betray the "man code" he so cherished; he stuck by my mom unconditionally so that it wasn't my mom who appeared to be the bad guy.*

And that's the kind of person he was: unceasingly loyal. It was one of his greatest traits, even if it meant I never played football.

60DL12

*this conclusion is purely my opinion of events; none of this has been verified or corroborated by my mother, nor will it ever be because I refuse to fraternize with unreasonable opponents of brute violence and inflicted pain - who does she think she is to sabotage the "man code"?

1966 Ford F-100

My father and I were always very close due to the fact that the male-female ration in our household was two-to-two, so we couldn't risk defecting to "the other side" and potentially lose ground in the everlasting battle of football on Sundays, action movies on movie night and other masculine endeavors. There was a known code that we had each other's back lest the girls get the upper hand. As far back as I can remember, it was Dad and me. One of my earliest memories was of sitting in the driver's seat of my dad's beloved 1966 Ford F-100 pickup - the car in which my parents dated and eventually became their first car in marriage - which had long been sidelined in the garage. I remember pretending like I was driving on the soft, velvet-like bench seat; he would work in the garage and I would transform into driver extraordinaire, much to his pride and delight. I don't know when it began, but my love affair with the "66", as he called it, continues until today. I've heard many stories from various people about how I used to sit on the step behind the driver's seat - it was a single-cab stepside model - and repeat with a naive certainty, "My truck, my truck." I had never seend the truck move more than an inch, but I had already staked my claim and nobody would get in the way of it. 60DL12

An Introduction to Dennis

Dennis Lee Lowe, one-half of the equation that brought me into this world, passed away on January 29, 2012 at 51 years old. I had a full 24 years with him and this is my version of events.