Everything is Going Green

Well, the future is here. Technology is changing our lives. It changed mine this weekend.
My friend let me use his hybrid gas-electric car while he went to Arizona for a few days.

It was a light, pastel blue with enough windows to be a greenhouse. It looked like a car a stuffed animal would take on his morning commute.

"Yeah, sure," I thought, "thanks for the offer anyway."

The morning we were set to leave we took his car to the airport. We walked out to where it was parked, glistening in the rain, its pastel paint looking like an Easter egg in the intense green and wet of the northwest, and we climbed in.

My friend went to start the car but he was missing something; his key chain lacked a key. Never mind the new-found dilemma of what we are all going to call key chains when everything opens with small, black electronic devices that flash and beep, lets just focus on the fact that there was no turning involved in turning on his car.

Should we celebrate for the wrist muscles that will not need to strain themselves when starting our cars? Or should we morn for the piles of unused words that are being blown into obscurity by advancement?

I don't care. I don't care because the whole thing was just so cool.

The thing started by pressing a power button that looked like it came off of your vacuum cleaner. There was a screen in the dashboard that told us just exactly what was happening with the spinning gears and beeping computers below our seats and in the hood.

By the time I had seen my friend off at the terminal I could not wait to get behind the wheel. I waved goodbye and put the hybrid into gear–or the "on" position–or whatever, the point is I started going.

I buzzed around town and got some errands done and while I was going the display showed me exactly how much power I was using, how much I was charging the battery and what gas-mileage I was getting. Little symbols, much like badges awarded to boy-scouts, flashed on the screen at certain times. I never figured out exactly what they were for but they looked like leaves, and everyone likes to get badges.

At a stop sign the car turned off. That is right, it just turned off. My initial reaction was to worry that I had just killed the engine with a poor shift. I hurried to find the clutch pedal with my foot and I glanced to my rear-view mirror to see if I was holding up traffic. Then I remembered that I was driving an automatic hybrid. I tentatively pushed on the "gas" and sure enough, the car moved forward smoothly and silently. It was using its electric engine.

I felt like I was skating across the asphalt. I felt like rolling down my window at every stop sign to explain to the driver next to me not to worry because it was a hybrid, and the engine would turn off from time to time to conserve gas.

By the time that my friend came back to Portland I thought that his car was sleekly shaped with the benefit of many cool, futuristic windows. Plus, pastel blue is the new rugged black, right?
Our surroundings are shifting all around us because of technology–it has certainly shifted mine. Suddenly cutting down on air pollution is easier and starts by inserting a small black electronic device and pressing a power button.

The love you give comes back in the end.
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