The McCollumn - 10/7: "ED WINS"

I heard the car before I saw it, speakers blasting.

A crimson colored car sped past me on I-85, with a bald, middle-aged white guy in a Hawaiian shirt, smiling and waving as he went.

The license plate on the car was a vanity plate that took use of all seven seemingly alotted spaces with its message: ED WINS.

I laughed as I read it initially, thinking Ed’s car looked to be as old, as if not older, than Ed.

“I’m not sure I’d call that winning, Ed,” I said to myself.

I further began to think maybe Ed isn’t actually a nice Ed at all.

Perhaps he won the car in a high stakes poker game many years ago from some friend, updating the tag with each renewal to rub it in that he still has the car.

“That’ll show that guy, with his attitude and his face,” Evil Gambler Ed would say, as he twirled his mustache, as all villains must.

With some time to reflect, however, perhaps I was wrong about my mysterious friend.

Ed wasn’t a loser or a jerkish poker winner. He was just a nice guy.

True, Ed’s car seemed to be a run-down flivver.

It may have been a Chrysler LeBaron.

(I honestly can’t speak to the make of any car with any degree of certainty. If a crime ever happens where the police need a vehicle ID from yours truly, let’s hope they can find the culprits with my description of “a blueish sort of car with doors” or some similar recount.)

But, as he drove past, Ed seemed happy, the sort of happy that eludes so many of us.

Maybe Ed just drives that old car because he has a lot of great memories attached to it, fun times with friends and family as they cruised down the road to destinations only they knew.

Maybe not.

It doesn’t really matter.

What matters is I had no right to sit in judgment of Ed because, at a glance, he seemed to have things more put together than I do.

He was just there to spread some joy as he drove along the highway.

Ed, I don’t know you and I probably never will, but thank you for your message of joy that day.

You are winning, sir, and keep on doing it for all us.

Ed wins. Ed wins, indeed.