Fun, Fun, Fun

I used to inwardly mock the 50-somethings who bought new sports cars and wore big grins while driving them around. I wanted to tell them that buying a cool, youthful car did not make them cool or young.

Now I’m one of them.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Ford Thunderbirds. My parents’ white 1961 convertible T-bird was the first car I remember being driven in. Their navy blue 1967 four-door T-bird with the suicide doors was the first car I drove. (I plead the fifth on whether I went to the library like I told my old man now.) When Ford re-introduced the car in 2002 – a two-seater version with classic styling and modern features— I thought, “I’ve got to get one of those.” However, with two kids at home, I needed a back seat. And with two college tuitions looming, I did not need an extra car payment. Ford discontinued the car before I bought one.

I may have only imagined that I heard my name when, on a snowy December Saturday, my husband and I drove by the Lowell dealership featuring a winter white, mint-condition 2003 Thunderbird with opera windows. As I turned back for a second look, Paul said, “I saw it. I’m turning around.”

We checked it out and test drove it. We ran the numbers. Paul told me I had earned it and that, sitting in it, I looked like Suzanne Somers in American Graffiti. (Lovely lies like that are the reason we’ve been married for 25 years.) This was my car. It seems more than coincidental that I brought home my baby (the car) with no back seat, two days after my baby (our younger daughter) turned 21.

Now I think I had it all wrong when I was younger. It turns out that the early 50s is the perfect age to fine-tune our bucket lists – which, for some of us, includes bucket seats. As we drove minivans and economy sedans, cluttered with Cheerios® and Legos®, car seats and sports bags, we knew we really belonged in a different car – a convertible, a luxury car, or maybe a big off-road truck. And we knew that, as important as our accomplishments may have been in our 20s, 30s and 40s, we have other goals too. Whether to start a business, travel, write a book, have a perfect lawn, finally spend quality time with a spouse or volunteer for a favorite charity, it is time to recognize the goals that are ours alone. For many of us, this is the first time we can afford the time and cost to start meeting these goals. That new car is probably not the only, or the most important, item on the life list. But it might be the most fun.

My husband was right. We’ve earned it. Yesterday was dry, sunny and unseasonably warm, so I took the T-bird out. Driving it on the highway, I was cool and young. And nobody could tell me otherwise.