Doyce sat down opposite to me and, looking me in the eye, solemnly said, “I need to tell you that we mean something very different by a particular word.”
It was a vaguely surreal. I immediately tried to figure out what was going on. Had I made a gaffe somewhere? Posted something that had been taken amiss? Screwed up somewhere big-time?
Nah. He went on to explain, I defined “zippy” a different way than he did.
When he uses the term “zippy” in reference to a car, it means that it has pep, pick-up, is lively and fun to drive.
When I use the term, he opined, it means that I want to moonlight as a gun-runner.
He then continued, smiling, rattling off the list of vehicles I’d mentioned test-driving and finding wanting in the “zippy” category, cars that they had decided had plenty of zip and pep and vim and vigor. Whereas now I was saying I’d found something “zippy” in the Impreza WRX, and they assumed that it was going to do some sort of Roadrunneresque roadway-flipping-up-as-I-drive-past thing.
He also noted that Jackie reglarly reported my passing her on C470 in the morning.
Well, harumph. I guess. And I only go 73 on C470, 8 mph over the posted speed limit.
But maybe I’ll let it creep up a little higher than that tomorrow morning. For the inaugural voyage, so to speak.
Zoom-zoom.
(title with apologies to Adam)
The process went something like this:
1. Try out a couple cars that Dave had said were a little wanting in the pep department and find myself completely satisfied.
2. Trying out one of his “smile-inducing” models and immediately think “whoa”.
I’m not going to bandy about the word ‘overkill’. For some folks, I’m sure it’s right up their dragstrip-grade alley. 🙂
I suppose the thing is, I don’t expect to be roaring along at 120mph any time soon. I try to very diligently stay at SL+8 as my SOP. I regularly duck back into the slow lane to let faster cars get by.
But it’s kind of nice to have the oomph to get by a truck when I get trapped behind it. And to just know that the power is there …