Square Blue Taxi                                               ©   A. Jones 2007 Okay, I admit it. I drive a Scion. Kids don’t think it’s cool and my last boyfriend hesitated before allowing me to park in his driveway. Yet every ad I get from Toyota wanting me to come to their Scion parties is clearly targeted to teens and twentysomethings because, face it, who is going to buy a Scion except people just starting out in life, with little money to invest like teens, and twenties just out of college and road warrier songwriters who start out new every day and need something that’s really large on the inside? Because it’s a bargain at sixteen thousand with all that room, good gas mileage, amenities like air conditioning and power windows (which my old Honda Civic didn’t have, though it cost around twenty-four). It’s perfect for anyone who has to pack three instruments, a bass amp, a speaker, CD boxes, cables, stands, books, luggage, food, boots, hanging clothes and sometimes an airbed and still wants a good thirty-three miles per gallon and good visibility out the back window. And I can’t remember anyone else in a Honda Civic ever waving gaily to me every time we passed like we belonged to a fun new club or anyone in a Subaru GL hatchback, for that matter (that was the one I was driving when the gasket disintegrated between the transmission and the differential fluid reservoirs and hung me up in New Jersey overnight, twice while I got the engine rebuilt). So your opinion about my car doesn’t matter. Furthermore, its importance is elevated by virtue of its secret name. It is called the Tardis, after Dr. Who’s timeship, which was much larger inside than it was out. Tardis stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, and I named my car this because it takes me into my future. So to anyone who thinks Scions are not cool, I say, eat my dust, Earthling.