I’ve always been impressed by the unending enthusiasm and optimism of an old friend of mine.
Unfortunately, I’ve lost track of Shawn over the years, but I expect the memories of his constantly smiling face and the many crazy exploits we had together will remain stuck in my head well into my old age.
Shawn was always a dreamer, but often his dreams were just simply unrealistic.
One time, he bought an old Volkswagen Bug which hadn’t run in years that he saw for sale on someone’s front yard for a couple of hundred dollars and had it towed it into the parking lot of the apartment building where he was living at the time.
Knowing that Shawn had absolutely no mechanical skills, much less the tools, to get the dilapidated vehicle back on the road, I asked him what he intended to do with it.
He said that he didn’t plan to make the car road worthy again, but intended to transform into a small personal helicopter so that he could quickly get around without having to deal with road traffic.
Just how he intended to do that was anybody’s guess.
Shawn had barely enough money to pay his bills so how he was planning to pay for what was going to obviously be a very expensive project was beyond me. As said, he also didn’t have a mechanical bone in his body so I, or he for that matter, didn’t have a clue where the expertise was to come from to take on the job in the days before the internet (even if there was internet at the time, there was still no way for Shawn to interpret and understand all the inner workings of a helicopter without some sort of basic training and understanding of the systems and the mechanics involved).
Then there’s the whole concept of flying a helicopter when Shawn had barely mastered driving a car.
Shawn told me that he would just teach himself by trial and error when the helicopter/Volkswagen was operational, which I assured him would result in his quick demise.
As well, as now, there were no regulations that would allow small, homemade helicopters to operate around any populated areas in a safe and legal way, so his dream of just hopping in his helicopter to go to the grocery store up the road was a non-starter.
I tried to explain all this to my friend, who is a reasonably intelligent fellow, but was well known for his flights of fancy.
He said I lacked faith in him and assured me that he would begin work on the project right away and expected he would have it completed within three months when he would show me that my skepticism was totally unfounded.
Shawn did, in fact, lift the hood of the car the very next day so he could determine what was needed to get it into the air.
He took a bunch of pictures of the engine and made some notes, but that’s about as far as the project got.
The car sat in the parking lot for more than half a year before the landlord finally got fed up with it and had it towed to the nearest junkyard.
Shawn had explained to him what he intended to do, but the landlord had about as much faith in that actually happening as I did.
After the loss of the car/helicopter, I tried to tell Shawn that I told him right from the beginning that there was no chance that his project would ever get off the ground.
But he had already moved on to another project; this time taking a half sunken old fishing boat and converting it into a pleasure cruiser on which he would take tourists out to sea.
Again, Shawn had no knowledge of the sea or how to drive, much less, fix a boat to a level in which it would be licensed to take tourists, but that was of little relevance to him.
However, he did put some new planks on the boat, painted it with a big happy face on the front and placed it in the driveway of his new residence where, while it never got close to the ocean, it did become a favourite destination for the neighbourhood kids who would play “ship” on it, much to the delight of Shawn.
I always shook my head when Shawn used to tell me of his many big plans, but he liked to dream and who would want to take that way from him?
I’ve certainly never dared to dream like him, and all that did was make me more mediocre while Shawn was never afraid to let his imagination run wild.
I often wonder whatever became of my old friend.
