The Big Transcendental Footprint of Life.

Several times in this and other blogs, I have written about Chuckie. He was the guy who passed away in the car accident about 15 months ago. He was one of those people that make a mark on everyone around him, with the only caveat being that no one realizes it until it is too late. It never dawned on me how much one life affects the lives around them until the other day as I sat at the stop sign around the corner from my house...

Chuckie drove a yellow Acura Integra Type R. Before that, he had a yellow Mazda RX7...before that was the yellow Honda CRX. See the pattern here? Chuckie was a gear head. A big gear head. He liked life loud. He liked it with as much distortion as possible, and he loved it fast. Scary fast. I was in the car with him the day he crashed the RX7. I was with him the day he bought the Acura. It would p [rove to be his last. I vividly remember telling him on that day during the test drive, "You're going to kill yourself in that car." He didn't care. It was small, it was foreign, and it was fast as all hell, and most of all...it was yellow. Somehow, in his passing, he has become all things yellow. The yellow finches that fly through my parents yard in the summer. Big Bird...(he would love that.) Buttered popcorn. There he is.

I sat the other day at the intersection by my house, and there across the street in the parking lot was a bright yellow Saturn. It's impossible to see a yellow car and not think of him. It then hit me how every decision, every preference, every piece of who we choose to be leaves a footprint on this world long after we depart. It is only our uniqueness, and individuality that decided how deep that footprint will sink into the collective unconscious.

I have always thought of myself as eccentric, and hopelessly individualistic. I love all things tacky. Shag carpeting inside of 1969 Cadillacs. Disco balls. Platform shoes. Lava lamps. Swirly paisley print material on polyester fabric. I love it all. Bad humor. Sarcasm. It never occurred to me that all of these things that I just think make my life a little brighter, more unique place to be are, in fact the only things I really have to insure my own immortality. All these strange, bizarre, "tacky" things I love someday others will love, because they loved me.

I wondered, in that second, what will trigger people to smile when I’m gone that makes me undeniably, definitively, myself? I can only hope there are thing about me that create my own footprint. That no matter the places I've been, or the things I've seen, there will be parts of me that bring me back, of only for an instant, when I am gone. It's as though the more extreme...the more individual...the more undeniable /Mollie/ something is...the more it makes me a part of the world. By being as far out there as I possibly can, I'm really creating my legacy.

Chuckie's footprint is here as long as there are people here that see yellow cars, and hear Led Zeppelin, and think..."Man...I miss that cat. That was so...him." It's too late for him to change his stars, because the print is cast. He is now forever who he was destined to be. My footprint, on the other hand, is still here to be created. Something I can still mold, and shape. Something not yet tangible that day by day only, I have the ability to make for myself. The only thing real in this world...What you leave behind. Who you are. As long as there is still a foot to shape the print, the story has not yet been written. Who knows what my footprint may become. No one really knows what they were all about until the day that they die. It's the walk that leaves the prints...THAT is the story.