A story about Ron Thiemann my teacher

One of my favorite memories about Ron Thiemann goes like this:

I think I was in my senior year, maybe even my last semester of college.  I was a TA in Ron's Religion 102 class, the class where I had met him my freshman year.

He was looking for someone to drive him to the airport early one morning and was offering to pay.  I was happy to volunteer.

I think he picked me up at my house, in a white sports car.  I don't know what it was - probably not a Mazda Miata (remember them?) but maybe an old Triumph or something, stick shift.  We drove (he drove) to the airport on Cobbs Creek Parkway.  Maybe it was even a Saturday, or else it was just very early in the morning.  There was no traffic at all.

Then the best part - I got to drive this sports car back to his house!

And for this he paid me $10!!!

And then, because this was the kind of guy he was, I think he even wrote about it on a recommendation for me, about how helpful I was, or else he took the trouble to write me a note of thanks. 

So let's see - I got like 30 minutes alone with my advisor, whom I greatly admired.  I got $10.  And I got to drive a cool white sports car.  And then I got an additional thank you!

What I love about this memory is how different things seem when you are 20 and when you are 36 or so (that was his age then) and when you are 50.  Those little joys like driving a car that mean so much when you don't own one.  What $10 meant to me then and what it means to me now.  And the joy of driving down an empty, beautiful road, where I had never been before.