Congrats on the new wheels!

I stopped driving it 20 years ago. It’s still sitting on my mom and dad’s farm, rusting away.

But I broke the lighter once by trying to plug in the car adapter for a cd player. It wouldn’t fit and busted the lighter right through the plastic on the dashboard.

It never would keep a muffler on. Everytime we replaced one, it’d fall off. In high school I never put more than $10 of gas in it at a time, no matter how low it was – I would drive on fumes for days.

I drove that bad boy for 8 years until we finally sold it to some poor high school student. I think it had over 160,000 miles on it (we once drove it from MN to VA and back – and made it!).

Okay, after my divorce, I bought my very first car. It was a forest green Toyota Corolla and I loved that car. I mean, really loved it. I had never loved an inanimate object before. I paid the sticker price for it. Can you believe how stupid, I mean, inexperienced I was? Who pays sticker price for a car? A sucker, that’s who.

I took my first interstate road trip in that car. I took it everywhere. It was my freedom. I had only had it for about a year when, one horrible night as I was sitting in my living room watching TV, I heard the loudest, most devastating crash outside. I ran out on the porch, and my car was gone! Simply gone. In it’s place sat another car, lights flashing, motor running, half up on the curb. I slowly walked out to the car, and there was some bleary eyed driver who turned out to be a drunken Russian who couldn’t speak English. My sister called the police. But, where was my car? I looked down the street, and there it sat, an entire block away, in the middle of the road. The sheer force of impact had catapulted my precious darling all that way. Soon the police arrived, and then the tow truck. I gathered all my things out of the car before they took her away, naively thinking that I would see her again after a visit to the body shop.

Oh no. She was completely destroyed. She couldn’t be repaired. If only I had known that I would never see her again, I would have given her a hug, or something. I never even got to say goodbye. Not only that, but the insurance company only gave me about 75% what I had paid for her (remember the sticker price? remember that she was a year old?) I found the same color/make of car through a broker for a price I could afford. It was also a year old. But it was never the same. Every time I got in that car I thought, “You are an imposter. You are not my car.”

I’ve had other cars since then, but I’ve never been able to love again.

I hate driving. Thank god for New York public transit.

Okay, so that was more about driving than the car. Eh.

I bought my first car right after finishing college, with a loan from my parents. A 1992 Mazda Miata. I lurved it. Got it right at the end of the summer, drove back down to Baltimore with a bikini top on – and got myself a lovely seatbelt sunburn for my trouble. (And a few honks from truckers ;-) Ah, to be young and stupid again!

Totalled it three months later, skidding into oncoming traffic in the rain. Very, very sad.

I would have loved to get another convertible, but couldn’t put my parents through the agony (I had been in the hospital for some indeterminate number of days which I do not remember). So I got a Toyota Tercel. Which stalled. Regularly. By the time I convinced the dealership that it was a lemon and they should take it back, I had to keep my foot on the accelerator all the time so that it wouldn’t conk out – so I was stopping using the emergency break and clutch. Not so safe!

Traded that in for a Honda Civic hatchback. Loved it. But not as much as my convertible… so that’s what I got for a graduate school graduation present from my hubby.

We were worried about having a convertible with a baby. Good thing I didn’t let that stop me!

First car: 1987 Renault Alliance. Quite possibly the worst car ever made. Hell is where the mechanics are French!

On the upside, I owe everything I know about cars to that piece of shyte. And I know a lot about cars.

Oh yeah, I guess I wasn’t such a great driver back then, either. I rear-ended my friends dad the first month I had the car. I was mortified!!