The World According To Ben Part 25 ...Our Electro Car Loving Hero Semi Lusts After A Mustang GT

Our dear friend Robyn drives a rockin’ new car. It’s a Mustang. It’s a fastback. It’s a GT. It’s a V8. It’s ruby red. It’s galloping-pony sleek, even standing still. At idle, it rumbles like the Sharks and the Jets. Add throttle and it sings a Wagnerian baritone aria. Mash the gas and down come the walls of Jericho. I imagine myself behind the wheel. The reality of car and driver wouldn’t last long. We’d conjoin. We’d morph into a barn swallow Camouflaged in cardinal feathers In full-bore pursuit of all the juicy bugs Hovering over the Amish fields At corn tassel height. I’d dart sharply left, then sharply right, Then sharply left again. I’d suck in all the Japanese beetles. They’d metabolize into a steady flow Of 93 octane unleaded. Sounds reckless but, well, You couldn’t stop me. You shouldn’t stop me. This reverie isn’t all encompassing, But almost. Who knows what’ll happen Should you interrupt me.

I promise: The ’Stang will soon be back And so will I, Panting and sweating the way birds never do, With the high-tech 10-speed automatic shifter Firmly notched in “Park”… With the engine on-off buttoned into silence… With various cooling, contracting metals ticking A veritable symphony for maracas and claves… And I’ll smooth those steely ruby feathers While gently, carefully wiping Every bug off the windshield, bumper and grille. It is, after all, What a friend would do.

I am a committed electric automobile driver. But… every so often, a gasoline-burning car turns up in my driveway that makes me more than a little envy-green. So it is with Robyn’s new ’Stang. I can imagine her innocently rolling up at a stoplight next to some wacky tuner Subaru with blacked-out windows, a five-story wing and a muffler the size of a trashcan… and totally shredding it when the light goes green. That’s what 460 horsepower and 420 foot pounds of torque can do. “You might drive a goer but you’ll never lose her.”