Can You See Me?

The other afternoon I was driving through Westwood and a couple of car lengths in front of me was a Ferrari. Now, Westwood residents seem to mostly do very well for themselves and there is even a Ferrari dealership on Route 1 in Norwood (I would love to know how many they sell in a year and how many of those clients aren't members of the Patriots), so this was not a totally unusual sight. I wouldn't say it is a common thing to see but having a luxury car riding through town is not on the same level as a UFO landing. On a personal level, I have to say there are many reasons I would never think about buying a Ferrari. The two most obvious facts are I don't think they are built for people my size and I don't care how rich I get, I don't think I could ever justify spending that much money on a car which is going to lose half its value as soon as I drive off the lot. But, the third reason is that it just doesn't seem practical for the area where I live. Typically I travel on roads with lots of stoplights and when you are sitting behind the wheel of a what is essentially a road-legal race car I would imagine that gets incredibly frustrating.

Watching the guy behind the wheel rev his engine only to move approximately 100 yards before the light changed and he was forced to sit there again I was overcome with a very specific emotion. It is a German expression: shadenfreude. The word doesn't exist in any other language, but it roughly translates to "pleasure derived from the suffering of others." And honestly, suffering and public mocking is what this guy deserves for buying a Ferrari and then running errands. I get a lot of grief for owning an SUV with all-time 4-wheel drive and a huge engine capable of driving up the side of a mountain when the fact is I never go off-roading. However, at least the interior space comes in handy should I need to move things. There is nothing useful about a Ferrari. It is a giant engine with two seats attached. (Seriously, where would you even put your golf clubs?) If you want to go turn a few laps around a track or see how fast you can get moving on the highway it would be a fantastic option, but in any other setting it is a terribly impractical decision. Sitting at a traffic light, watching his gas gauge slowly sink as the jet engine behind him guzzled fuel while not going anywhere I assumed this guy was slowly coming to grips with his poor choice in transportation. With some perspective, I realize now I couldn't have been further from the truth.

In all this time I have neglected to mention the color of the Ferrari in question: yellow. You know, the kind of bright, canary yellow which is only found on sport cars and in the "Fast & The Furious" movies. (Think about it - you never see a canary yellow Taurus.) I have owned some cars of questionable coloring in my lifetime, but you could not pay me enough to drive a yellow car. I find that yellow cars make a very simple statement: LOOK AT ME!!! It was at this moment the entire puzzle came together in front of my eyes: canary yellow + completely impractical Ferrari + louder than necessary engine = a man desperate for attention. This man wasn't annoyed that all these red lights were preventing him from opening up his throttle and seeing how fast he could make this car go - hell, he had probably never taken it out of second gear before. Like a D-list celebrity who calls the paparazzi to let them know where they will be and then acts annoyed when those people start taking pictures, this guy simply wanted to be stared at and have people ooh and ah his car. I'm sitting back there smirking because I'm thinking this guy is pulling his hair out, frustrated that he is currently unable to do what the car makers intended this model of modern engineering to do and meanwhile the reality is probably closer to this guy purposely went down this street specifically because it had all these lights and offered the most chances to impress the high schoolers waiting for the bus.

I should probably commend this guy for having the money to afford a Ferrari to begin with because I certainly don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to blow on a car I would be afraid to drive. (Another reason I would never buy a Ferrari - there are lots of bad driver out there and you can't control how they are around your car.) However, I think we all know that just because a person has a lot of money that doesn't mean they make all the right decisions and people who are successful in the business world can still screw things up in their personal lives (as evidence, I think we all saw the Bob Kraft video this week). If I could get a hold of this guy I would just want him to know that spending a lot of money to impress random people on the street for 10 seconds at a time is a really bad way to go through life. He should be much more confident about the success he has clearly achieved and know that as long as he is happy with his life that should be more than enough in the long run. It's about self-worth, not the worth you get from others. But, if anyone out there thinks they know who this guy is, please don't direct him to this blog post, because the last thing I want is for him to find out I was writing about him, as the attention would pretty much defeat that message.