Manual Transition

May 6, 2022·32 min·2 clips

Chris Papadopoulos' mysterious ride to school gave Mark a glimpse of future success through stick shifts and Shaquille O'Neal.

The car comes first. Before he can legally drive, the narrator waits for his father to bring home the warm Mazda RX-7, then practices adulthood in private. Seat forward, mirror adjusted, clutch pressed. In his head there is jazz, cigarettes, and northern Virginia opening up around him. Then the fantasy snaps. His father dies unexpectedly right before high school, leaving what the narrator calls a rough transition. There is support, but the absence does not leave. At Winston Churchill High School, he sees a chance to become less quiet and more confident. He wants a mentor, maybe too badly. In the strange math of loss, his mother's possible remarriage starts to look like a doorway to a new kind of father. The replacement he imagines is pure teenage cinema: cooler jeans, useful toughness, enough looseness to teach confidence by example. Lauren is not that guy. When his mother marries him, the choice feels almost comically wrong for the narrator's hopes. The ages sharpen the joke. He is 15, his mother is 45, and Lauren is 70 when the relationship begins. Today, Lauren is 93. What starts as a boy pretending to drive turns into a funny, uneasy look at losing one father, expecting another, and meeting the person who actually arrives.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Family Ghosts