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Day 172. in which there is no horn.

Alright, so, perhaps I've given my old best friend, Brian, some undue press. We spent this afternoon goofing off, drinking coffee, listening to music, and being lazy. Brian and I reminded each other of some things we had forgotten. Me, the blueberry beer from the Gilded Otter in New Paltz. Brian, sitting together in the Hobbes class with Heath - but in all due fairness, Brian pointed out that we took a lot of classes together, so how could he recall which ones I was there for, and which ones I was not?

We both remembered the time we got the ticket in the old car, and we both agreed it had been a great day.

I said to Brian, "I wish you still had your old car...where is it, anyway? Is your brother-in-law still driving it around?"

"No," he laughed, "No, it dropped two cylinders and was beyond repair. It would have cost a couple thousand to fix it. It's probably been turned into scrap metal."

"Your old car was turned into scrap metal?! Oh no!" I felt like someone had punched me in the gut.

"Yeah, I guess I should have kept it, just to keep it...but you know, driving around in something safe isn't such a bad thing."

O.K., I couldn't argue with that. But new Brian wasn't the same as old Brian, and the Mini-Cooper stood for everything that had gone wrong with Brian! Brian thought I was being ridiculous, and tried to convince me he hadn't changed all that much.

"The only thing different between old Brian and new Brian is that new Brian has a bigger paycheck than he has ever had in his entire life."

O.K., that was hard to argue with, too. But I still was not convinced. And Brian could tell this.

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, this car has no horn," he stated.

I laughed. "What do you mean, it has no horn?"

"Well, one day, I was getting into the car with a really big cup of coffee and I spilled it all over the steering wheel. So, now, there is no horn. It also got into some of these dials here and now the air conditioner and the heater randomly turn themselves on and off," he explained. "So, the new Brian isn't that different from the old Brian after all."

Perhaps, just perhaps, he is right.