Air Car... You can float on air!
Have you ever wanted something so bad but it just wasn't meant to be. How do you deal with that kind of disappointment?
When I was a child, I was in the Cub Scouts. Aside from the great honor of wearing my uniform to school on Tuesdays, I received a free subscription to Boys Life, a magazine for boys that featured articles on camping, adventure, and citizenship. But there was another gift that I received from that magazine. It was a dream by the name of "Air Car."
At the back of the magazine, there is an advertisement section full of mail order "goodies." Everything from "Learn to Program a Computer" to "Build a Better GeoDome House." It was in this very section that I found a dream.
The Air Car is a hovercraft that can be built at home with some common household parts and a vacuum cleaner motor! For only $3.95 + Shipping and Handling, I could receive the blueprints for this magnificent machine. I spent countless hours imagining what this device looked like, how it handled on the open road, how my life would be so much better with such a machine. Every month as that magazine showed up in the mail, I found myself flipping to the back to make sure that the advertisement was still there, that this dream was still a possibility.
I would lie on the top bunk in my bedroom and think about floating above the wheat field that lay just past our home, or visiting a friend after school or best of all, floating over to the "Jet-Stop" convenience store and picking up some candy whenever I wanted.
Yes, for a meager $3.95, I could buy this dream, but as fate would have it, my parents just couldn't see it that way at all. Didn't they know they were ruining my life? This was a paltry $3.95 for a dream! This wasn't a toy either. It was purely utilitarian in nature. I could do grocery shopping for my Mom. I could float to school every day - no more car pools! And, it was a cost-effective purchase, my friend Dusty Allison and I could build a couple of them, one for each of us. This means that each dream costs only $1.97, I would even pay the extra penny myself!
As time passed, eventually I stopped looking at that magazine advertisement, and stopped thinking about floating around my neighborhood. This may have been the first dream that I ever possessed but could not obtain. Until now.
I do not know if we make our own stars or if we must accept the stars that we are given, but a good friend of mine, Christopher Smith, shared a similar story. Yes, we are older, but I can assure you, we both shared the same fervor with which to find the plans for this dream and make it a reality!
Alas, we did indeed find the plans for this dream, and are now in the process of claiming what is rightfully ours, how we found it is not as great of a story as the dream itself, but I can assure you it will not be a dream unrealized.
Since I was 10, there have been several heartaches, lost loves, and dreams unrealized. I do believe that this is the natural order of things. To be honest, I really don't think that the Air Car will even work, but I have to find out. If I build this machine of marvel, I can at least put one more point back on my side of the score board and take one off of the Visitors team, and that is just what I need these days.
So to anyone out there that has lost a few points along the way, I say the following words of encouragement:
"Go Air-Car!"
- Mark
PS: If you want to build your own Air-Car, you can see an image and ordering instructions at: http://www.hovercraft-aircar.com | 
