Wow, I love my new electric car. It’s a beauty. Is Elon a genius, or what? The dash isn’t cluttered with any messy gauges and graphs and stuff. Clean as a whistle. And, what a computer screen! Looks like Broadway in New York. And the pickup! Holy shit. It scares me. Mom goes nuts and hangs on for dear life.

What’s so scary?

It seems to fling my body into the future, leaving my brain stuck in the past. I’m suspended in space and flattened against the seat at the same time. What if some kid or dog jumps into the street from nowhere and I’m accelerating at 1000 miles per second?

Quit dreaming, Dad. Your acceleration is about as fast as I park. By the way, where do you put your cane in the car, the front or the back?

Good question. I forgot it on the roof the other day and had to order a new one, which hasn’t come yet.

How do you get around?

I mostly stay in the car listening to opera on Sirius XM. The new cane is supposed to come tomorrow.

Good god! You’re not even 90, and you stay in the car for hours?

Don’t push it, sonny. I saw an 86-year-old on a massive ski jump structure the other day on the TV news. We old guys can relax without being a lost cause. I’m allowed to relax.

Yeah, I saw that TV report too. But it was a woman – a woman! They live longer. And she didn’t jump, remember? Her right ski fell off and her caretakers carried her down.

Details.

About the car. What color?

It’s between bright grass green and smokey vomit green. It’s called by the same name as the password to open the computer: gravitgreen.

Gravitgreen? Yuk. Okay. Any complaints about the car? Isn’t it… sort of… too modern for you? You are 84, not 48 as you keep saying. I thought you had learned how to deal with your dyslexia. And, you’re still confused about email?

I’m learning. Remember how I texted you last week? No problem.

Yeah… but…

There was one problem on Saturday, however. Your mom and I had a dinner date with the Simplars, our friends across town.

Okay…

But we had to cancel.

Why?

Well… Mom wanted to know how much electricity the car had before we left. They live almost two miles away, and we spent about half an hour trying to figure it out on the car’s computer. We kept getting the World Series score, no matter what we did. We finally decided we must have enough electricity and we should just go. So, we tried to go… but…

But what?

Didn’t know how to start the car. The god damn computer doesn’t tell you how to do that!

Dad, it’s always clicked on when you open the door of a Tesla.

Oh. How is anyone supposed to know that? Well, we called our friends and told them Mom was sick and cancelled. The motor is always on?

Yeah. When you open the door.

But I didn’t hear anything. Are you sure? It was as quiet as when my hearing aids batteries go out. And I had put new batteries in that morning. If the motor is on, I should hear something.

It’s quiet, Dad. It’s electric, remember? What did you do then Saturday night?

It took a while to find the button to open the door, since it isn’t mentioned on the computer. We finally googled it on our iPhone. It’s a cinch, when you know where it is. Just press it.

Right. Well, what did you do Saturday night?

Since it was about 9:30 or so when we got home…

But you were home.

No. I mean when we finally were able to get out of the car and go to our house. Trouble was that when I reached the front door, I didn’t have the house key. It turns out that it took me a while to remember I left it in the car. No problem. I found it. Were we hungry!! We had a great dinner.

What was it?

Granola, with some milk, fat free, of course. Cholesterol, you know. Crazy. Anyway, we figured if we forgot to eat breakfast in the morning it didn’t matter because we already had it the night before. Crazy, eh?

No. Makes sense, for you guys.

Yeah, thanks. By the way, what did you do Saturday night?

Remember Gloria, the bleached blond bombshell roller skater?

Sure. She’s got…well, you know…

We got married in city hall. They had a discount on marriages that day.

Oh, my god. You’re only 16. Did you tell them that? Maybe the marriage isn’t even legal without parent consent when you’re that young. How old is Gloria?

They didn’t ask my age. She’s… hmmm, not sure. 30?

Why didn’t you tell us? We would have come.

I’m glad we didn’t, since we were in a hurry and didn’t have time to wait for you to start the car.

Is she a professional roller skater? Isn’t that dangerous?

Shit no. I mean, she’s not a pro skater. She falls quite a bit. She’s an IT tech at Tesla. Turns out the program to start the cars has errors and she’s trying to fix it. Two cars exploded when the driver hit the wrong key.

Whoa!!! Am I glad we didn’t do that. Hit the wrong key? There’s only one?

No, Dad. There are several. Take another look.

Oh. Okay.

Gotta to run, Dad. Gloria’s waiting for me. How about checking out used cars from the nineties? You know, the one’s before passwords were needed. And, they’re giving good prices for turned in Teslas, especially if they’re still new.