Tonight I saw the movie Juno—it was great, but I must admit I was a little distracted watching it. I had heard it was shot here in Vancouver, like many films, but I didn’t expect it to hit quite so close to home. In it, the characters attend my old high school, and the girl goes to a medical building that happens to be our weird old clinic near my mom’s house. It’s perfect for a movie—it looks like a funeral home inside, with dark wood paneling and busts of Hippocrates in alcoves. Behind the very 1962-style front desk are all of these built-in wooden cabinets, and up high there are latched doors which, when opened, contain crazy old pneumatic tubes that send things upstairs. It was so strange to see the receptionist in the film sitting back there, after visiting the place for so many years. Then there were several scenes on a running track, and these take place on the campus of the university that I work for. It was odd just how familiar the entire thing was.

Now, I am distinctly NOT one of those people who peaked in high school. I wasn’t tormented or anything, I simply couldn’t wait for it to be over—and so I rarely think about that time. But the last couple of months have really sent me back, between a call about a high school reunion, bumping into a former classmate, and a memorial service for an old friend that I met back then, which brought together some folks I haven’t seen since back in the day. And now this movie. It has stirred many memories, and a central part of all of them was my little ‘74 Datsun 610. It was a fantastic car, despite its tendency to backfire like a gunshot if you decelerated too fast, and that you often had to pop the hood and jumpstart it with a screwdriver, and that it sometimes would run rough and you would have to tighten the carburetor head, which over time would loosen so much that the screws were close to falling out. I changed the brake pads an awful lot of times over the course of those years which, looking back, is a little alarming—but it kept running through it all.

We got the car (used) when I was about ten or eleven, and soon after a gallon jar of milk broke in the trunk. My dad sold it to me when I turned 16, and I drove it through my early twenties. It emitted a faint waft of rotten milk every time it rained—and I suspect it still does, even if it’s a wee cube in a junkyard. If you have ever spilled milk in a vehicle, you know what I’m talking about—no amount of rusting, rotting or crushing could ever get that stink out.