Idealize

idealize
verb, transitive. To regard or represent as perfect or better than in reality.

Betty turned off the engine as soon as she pulled up to the stanchion in the bank's drive-through lane. She put her check and deposit slip in the canister, placed it in the cradle, slammed the lid and pressed the "Send" button. After the "whoosh" of the pneumatic system ended, she heard the teller through the tinny speaker.

"Good morning, Ms. Trask."

"Good morning."

"How do you want that cash?"

"Twenties."

Betty shifted in her seat and settled to wait for a few minutes. There appeared to be only one teller on duty, and she was in one of four cars at different stanchions, so she knew it would be a little while. Cars and trucks moved through the intersection she faced. There seemed to be a lot of traffic for mid-morning on a Tuesday.

She didn't notice it until she heard the canister return to the stanchion: a silver recreational vehicle, parked ahead and to her right in the bank's front lot. She looked at the sleek fairing for its awning, its distinctive curved corners, and knew what it was before her gaze found the logo on its door: "Airstream." She caught her breath. She had known they existed for years, but this was the first time she had ever seen one. It looked new--no dings in the brushed aircraft-aluminum skin; no mud splashed on the lower walls from its or anyone else's tires. Someone had taken the concept of the RV and idealized it to a level worthy of Plato.

"Will there be anything else, Ms. Trask?" the teller's voice crackled from the speaker.

"No thank you," Betty replied, retrieving the canister without taking her eyes off the Airstream RV. She continued to examine it as she removed her receipt and money and stuffed them into her billfold.

I am looking at a quarter-of-a-million dollars, she mused. I'm not sure it's worth that much.
Her eyes moved to the grill at the front of the RV. It bore the stylized three-pointed star within a circle of the Mercedes logo.

"Well, no wonder," she muttered aloud as she started her own engine.

As she left the drive-through area, she turned into the front lot so she could drive past the Airstream RV slowly and get a glimpse of the other side. As she did so, she wondered if she would ever see one of these again.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.