It's March 20th, the first day of Spring, which means it's officially permissible to put the top down on your convertible. Listen, I get it. Not everyone is the sort of topless die-hard that will endure Winter's frozen wrath and Summer's hellish sun just because the lid goes back on their car, but Spring and Fall are something different. In most of the country, the weather is sublime, neither too cold nor too hot. And yet, I see you everywhere, still hunkered under your canvas like turtles terrified of the world beyond your shells.

I know this seems petty. There are plenty of things to get riled over these days. Taxes. Trade wars. The slowly vanishing bees and song birds that signify our planet's turn towards a cooked, lifeless rock. But the sight of a convertible with its top up on a perfect day will throw me into an apoplectic rage faster than any of that. I assume that you bought your convertible of your own accord, that you weren't held at gun point or forced to abandon the hard top you really wanted in order to secure a loved one's freedom from a ring of Miata-slinging used car salesmen/kidnappers. So what are you waiting for? The sun is out. The air is a scientifically perfect 72 degrees. Is it permission? Fine. This is me giving you permission.

Because convertibles are generally terrible cars. They're floppy. They creak and rattle. They're noisy, hot or cold, and occasionally leaky. Heavy with a cumbersome roof mechanism. And yet, all of that is worth it when the cloth goes back and the world rides along in the cabin with you. With the sound of the last of the robins in the sky overhead, the air thick with dogwood blossoms and the year's first breaths of warm air, everything else falls away. All of the nonsense clogging your head falls out of your ears and bounces along the road behind you.

So do it for those of us who are stuck with a fixed roof. Do it for your own sanity, and mine. It's Spring. Put your top down.

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