Cars

I just got my car back from the body shop! I hated the rental I was driving so it is nice to be back in my familiar car. Oh cars how I hate and love thee. I had three things fixed on my car. I had the part where the lady side swiped me along my two passenger doors fixed. Then I had the front passenger fender dent fixed that had been done by a family friend um two years ago. I also had my front bumper fixed so it was no longer held on by wire. I like having a car; I have had my license since I was 15. Also living in Texas, things are spread out here, a car is handy. What I don’t like about cars is the up keep. Oil changes not so bad, everything else a pain. All of the body damage was on the passenger side and so I never saw it, nor did it impede me driving it. If it had not been for the boyfriend I may have never gotten any of it fixed. Things like that just don’t bother me. I have had 6 cars in the 17 years I have been driving and never had a car payment. I believe in paying cash for something used. That is how I roll! My first car was a baby blue mini van that did not have the middle seats because my grandfather forgot where he put them, no I am not kidding. My grandfather bought and sold used cars as a hobby and so he gave me one for my first car. The man was not very honest and so he would unhook the speedometer so that you could not tell that the car really had more miles on it than it said. So I had to take my car to get the speedometer reattached and tell why I was getting it reattached. Life lessons. I had to have a crow bar in the van at all times because if the sliding side door went too far I had to crow bar it back on the track. My other favorite feature was if I hit a bump the radio would go into scan mode and not stop unless you turned the car off.

My second car was a gift (a used one), a red blazer. I loved that car, probably my most care free car.

My next car was my mom’s old Acura that had a billion miles on it and I loved it! The only time I did not love it was after it would rain. The water would go somewhere, never found out where and then when you made a turn it would come pouring out of the sunroof onto your head. The first time it happened I almost had a wreck. After that I carried towels and a rain coat in my car. This was also the car that was vandalized in college. It was black and someone spray painted BIG PIMP across the driver’s side in white. I actually drove around like that for a month. Then when I did finally take it in they called and I thought they were going to say I could come pick it up. No they were calling to let me know that some one ran over the top of the hood when it was in the parking lot. Yes OVER the top of the hood. The guy thank fully had insurance. Oh and I of course never got the whole sunroof dumping water on me fixed.

Then came my 1995 shiny blue Cadillac. My grandmother passed away and it was one of the things she left me. This thing was just a huge shiny box of metal. Someone hit the side when I had it parked and I never knew who did it nor did I get it fixed. The cloth on the ceiling started coming off and so on a road trip to Houston to see a concert I bought multi colored push pins and had a friend put them all over the ceiling to keep it up. That car eventually had to be towed away and I got $100 for it.

Next came the turquoise Buick. This was given to me by my other grandmother for a nominal fee. The air conditioning did not work in it for a year because I got an estimate for $1500 and I could not afford it at the time. So yes I lived through an Austin Texas summer with no AC, miserable. I was getting an oil change one day and the guy said it could be fixed for $150, I almost kissed him. I did not wash this car for at least two years. When I moved in with the boyfriend it was sitting in my apartment parking lot because my grandmother had sold me a new car. The boyfriend got the car to his house, cleaned up and somehow sold it for over $1000. It did have really low mileage.

I now have the Passat, which I love. I also now love the color since they washed it after doing the body work; I had no idea what a pretty red it is. I have made a promise that I am going to wash it on a regular basis from now on. I just need to find out what a regular basis means.