Dear Road & Track:
I know your name is not John, but perhaps it should be. Maybe one of your columnists is named John. I don’t know.
I haven’t read any of your pages for a long time. So this letter isn’t just to that possible John, but you, collectively, as John. This is a Dear John letter.
I no longer read you while sitting on the, well, john.
A few years ago, I thought I would inspire my kids to read more. So as part of their Christmas extravaganza, I went online and subscribed to National Geographic for Katrina, and National Geographic Kids for Spencer.
While Spencer did read his regularly, I don’t know if Katrina read one.
But that was kinda okay, because I figured I would get around to reading them, too. After all, when my stepdad, Brad, came into my life, he brought with him about a decade’s worth of National Geographic, and that was a pretty good side benefit.
Now how does this concern you, Road & Track? You see, when I was liberally applying my VISA number, expiration date and three-digit security code on magazine subscriptions, the Internet suggested I could also get a subscription to Road & Track for a very, very good deal. Popular Mechanics, too.
As a young lad, I would spend copious amounts of time standing at the newsstand at the local Loaf ‘n’ Jug convenience store, first perusing the comics, then flipping through Popular Mechanics and Popular Science.
But as I got older, and my high school required us to sell magazine subscriptions so the school could afford to send our (my) debate team to nerd (debate) tournaments, I had different interests. Now, instead of comics, I was into cars, especially since I was driving a ’67 Buick LeSabre. Not quire a muscle car, but close enough.
Thus, at the time, I sold subscriptions to myself for Car and Driver and Road & Track. I would read through detailed descriptions of new cars I would never be able to afford, soaking in the formula writing about understeer and grip on the skid pad.
I might have been driving a car eight years older than I was, but I was still, at this point, a bit of a wheel nut.
I read your columnists, and your reviews, your ads, cover-to-cover. Then I went to university, and could no longer afford renewals, or much else, for that matter.
Step forward a couple decades to December 2015, and I bought another subscription, as part of the follow-on suggestions to National Geographic. A few weeks later, my first copy arrived.
And I put it to the side.
Then another copy arrived. I think it, or maybe the third, ended up on the floor and getting stepped on and wrinkled. I don’t know how, but it did.
Eventually, a full year were delivered. I think I might have thumbed through the pages of one or two editions, but I don’t think I read one article all year.
It’s not you, Road & Track, it’s me.
I’ve changed. I’ve moved on with my life. I buy vehicles with the intention of keeping them for a decade or so. My testosterone level no longer spikes when I read about high-horsepower Bugatti or Ferrari sports cars.
That will never be my world, so I’m not fantasizing about it anymore. The Jedi aren’t my world, either, but that’s an entirely different ballgame. Don’t go there.
Yet, like an abandoned lover who hasn’t figured out the legal definition of stalking, you won’t leave me alone.
For months afterward, my dead-tree mailbox continues to be filled with your love letters. Come back to me, you seem to plead forlornly. We can get back to together. Give me just one more chance.
I wonder, each time, if I wrote “return to sender, recipient deceased,” and dropped it back in the outgoing mail, would that end all my other mail?
Most of these love letters I have left unopened. Some went straight into the recycle bin. Others sat on my desk for several months, first. Some get torn apart before being recycled. Others have been shredded.
Yet on the last mail delivery day of the year 2017, there is but another love letter from you, Road & Track. “For Brian Zinchuk’s use only,” it says in all-caps. “Do Not Discard” is stamped there, too.
OK, fine, I’ll open it. Oh my goodness. I can get a whole year at the “Zinchuk rate” of $12. And if I want to add a year of Car and Driver, it’s just $5 more. That’s like one Starbuck’s venti cappuccino. Or is it grande? Why can’t they just say “large?”
Your road tests are enticing, Road & Track. I’d like to get back into bed with you, reading before I go to sleep, but really, you just put me to sleep now. There’s no spark, no drive, to our relationship anymore.
It’s time for your stalking to end.
Yours no longer truly,
Brian Zinchuk
