Tonight we were sitting at the Wheelhouse, a popular Waupaca restaurant, when a man walked in and sat down at the table next to us. He looked over at me and Will and said "Excuse me, do you have a blue minivan?""Yes, I do."
"The side door of your van is open."
"What kind of van was it?"
"A Caravan."
"Oh, that's not ours, we have a Honda."
"Oh, sorry about that."
OK, so not the most exciting conversation. The point of this boring story is that I look like a guy who drives a blue minivan. You can pick me out of a lineup! Not the guy who drives a Hummer or a Prius, the guy who drives a blue minivan.
He even got the color right! It's clear now that other people, judging me upon first glance, see a middle-aged man who likes the roomy comfort and relatively good gas mileage of a minivan, and chooses blue instead of red or black because those colors might be too flashy. It's so practical!
I suppose there are worse things people could assume of me upon first sight, like the guy who forwards bad jokes to his co-workers and friends, or the guy who tucks in his shirt but doesn't wear a belt, or the guy who doesn't shower after basketball.
But for someone who still, perhaps erroneously, considers himself young, the guy who drives a blue minivan is a label I'm not ready to embrace yet.
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