A gainst my better judgment, I will now admit to you that competition is not my strong suit. Sure, I like to win at board games and things like that, but contests involving the phrase “high stakes” do not fire me up. They never have. And here’s an example.

    When I was a kid attending Eau Claire’s St. James Elementary, we were having an end-of-the-year Olympics type thing were the school was competing in (low impact) track and field events. At one point, my whole class (there were only about nine of us) were lined up on a track painted onto the school’s parking lot, about to start a 30-yard dash. I’m pretty sure we were all wearing our school clothes – we didn’t even change into shorts or sweatpants or anything. There weren’t any big prizes at stake, not even a crappy plastic trophy with the gold foil flaking off. Nonetheless, everyone was excited about the competition.

    Before blowing her whistle to start the race, my teacher asked us what kind of car we wanted to be. I’m not sure why she did this. Maybe she thought the race, all by itself, wasn’t thrilling enough. Maybe she thought pretending we were cars would give us more motivation to run our little hearts out. Maybe she was bored. Who knows?

    Proceeding down the row, we all got a chance to name a car. As the other boys in my class rattled off the names of speedy automobiles like Corvette and Porsche and Ferarri, I thought hard about what I should say. Any dork could say something boring like “Lamborghini,” how obvious was that? Most of us a poster hanging up in our bedroom featuring a bright red Lamborghini, with its (totally friggin’ awesome) flip-up doors splayed open, striking a pose we’d later see echoed in a different kind of glossy picture (one our mothers would never let us go near, let alone hang above out bed). Nope, I had to be different. And cool. What automobile could possibly embody the collection of incredible features that was a fourth grade-level Mike Paulus?

    It was my turn. I called out, “Limo!”

    Yes, folks. Of all the precision automobiles in all the world, of all the amazing vehicles I’d seen do amazing things during countless hours of Saturday morning cartoons, of all the episodes of Knight Rider I’d watched, I chose the limousine. I might as well have said “corn combine” for all of the speed and agility a limo would signify.