RC and My Very Best Friend

RC and My Very Best Friend

I consider myself very fortunate to have gotten into this hobby when I did; what most consider the beginnings of the modern era of RC or to me, the mid 80’s. When I was in school I spent almost all of my free time working on my cars, cutting chassis’ out of plexiglass and trying to make things out of just about anything I could find around my parents basement. In the summer, RC was my babysitter as my parents went off to work each day at their in home office; I guess you could say I was a RC latchkey type of kid. For me the fondest memories I have of those summers were the Saturday nights that my best friend Chris would come over with his car and we’d “get ready for racing” which for two 13 year old kids meant, eating junk food, watching TV and mending very broken RC cars back together with a soldering iron. Oh those were the days (or nights I guess), chugging Yoohoo juiceboxes and fixing our broken cars from a day of thrashing while Dave Despain called the races on ESPN’s Saturday Night Thunder telling us how this guy “Jeff Gordon” was going to be a star someday. The other day I was in the grocery store and came across those very same juice boxes and was immediately sent back to the golden years; the nostalgic side of me couldn’t help but buy them. As I punched the straw through the foil, my mind went to the days when we’d hit the track, cars in our backpacks and a cooler loaded up with snacks. We’d spend about 25 minutes racing until our cars broke and the rest of the day kicking back in the shade, drinking Yoohoo and talking about kid stuff. While I’ve grown up and life has taken me down a roller coaster of a path to where I am now, Chris and I still keep in touch as best we can. Families and school functions may be the topic of discussion these days but at the heart of the matter, we’re both still the same kids, best friends, sharing life over some processed chocolate beverage chock full of all the corn syrupy goodness every growing boy needs. So as I write this and sip the last Yoohoo of the pack, I pour a little out to you my best friend. Here’s to a lifetime of memories.

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Updated: September 11, 2012 — 2:29 PM
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