FAST PARADE - EXCESSIVE SPEEDING IN SERVICE TO THE NATION.

“ARE YOU FREE ON SATURDAY?” my friend Larry asked on the phone. “We need drivers for the motorcade.”

- BY MATT FARAH

The year was 2000, and I had just graduated from high school. That summer I was shuttling cars at a North Jersey dealership, a job that even I couldn’t screw up. Larry went the other direction. He took an internship, which quickly turned into a job as an advance aide for the Clinton administration.

At this point, dear reader, let’s reimagine ourselves as apolitical teenage car enthusiasts. For the purposes of this story, politics matter not.

Larry’s gig seemed wild to our young brains. He helped arrange the president’s ground transportation from airports to appointments and appearances, prescreening the locations and the people the president would interact with along the way.

So when this friend said “motorcade,” I knew exactly which motorcade he meant. But not why, in any universe, he’d be calling me.