Escape Artist

I am known to possess the power to sleep through hurricanes.  It's odd, then, that over the past few days I've found it almost impossible to get to sleep due to some sort of bizarre excitement.  I say bizarre because it's similar to the feeling I had when trying to get to sleep on Christmas Eve when I was still in single digits, except this time Santa is going to give me gifts of 400-page-a-week readings on obscure legal doctrine.  And then in four months he's going to ask me five randomized questions about one of those pages during one of those weeks and my ability to expound on those will determine my entire future.  At least, that's how I hear it's going to go.

Today I said goodbye to my car.  All cars should have names, and mine was named Houdini.  Houdini the Escape. 

I started driving Houdini at the end of my senior year at Woodberry.  Our first trip together was all the way down to Florida, where I first conceptualized a real-life game of "battleship" involving bottle rockets and rowboats (which we did not play).  After that and a trip to the beach, Houdini helped me move myself in to William and Mary.  Being a stupid and silly 18 year old, I figured that I would be able to circumvent on-campus parking regulations by simply parking Houdini ten minutes off campus at a Food Lion.  This actually worked.  After about seven weeks (during which I only visited Houdini once or twice) I realized that I had been parked the entire time under the "no parking overnight- violators will be towed" sign.  Luckily Houdini is a master of disguise, so no one ever towed him. 

Over the years at WM I continued to ask Houdini to help me do the impossible... most of which involved never paying WM parking services.  One day I had parked Houdini in a restricted spot and when I came back I had a parking ticket.  This was to be expected- I knew I couldn't avoid them forever.  Then I looked at the ticket- it was somehow dated for the next day at 6PM.  The next day I walked into parking services at 3PM and said "apparently I'm going to do something wrong in about three hours," while handing them the ticket.  The woman who was keeping watch over William and Mary parking tickets for the day simply tore the ticket up.  Houdini had worked his magic again.

Houdini had a very sensitive accelerator, which allowed for quick escapes in tricky situations.  Houdini took me through the terrible streets of New York City, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Orlando.  Driving through these cities always made me want to stop driving forever, but at least Houdini kept me safe.  At times Houdini was temporarily rebranded- much like any plane holding the President is Air Force One, Houdini became The Man-mobile (for men only), the M-mobile (for people with M names only), and Moving-Truck-One (self-explanatory).  He always remained Houdini the Escape at heart.

Now my sister has him and is driving him off to UNC-Asheville as I write this.  I took this picture as she left.  I have already told her she is not allowed to rename him.  With luck, he will continue to perform his tricks as admirably for her as he did for me.