My car is almost old enough to vote. I think that's kinda cool.
I bought my car back in 200X, with X = a very small number (2? 3? I can't remember). It was the Greenest of Green cars, back in the day: Green because it was a first-generation Prius. Green because I bought it used, not new. Green because it was actually the color green.
I paid real money (!) to add gold-and-silver swirls, partly so I could tell it apart from other cars in parking lots (I'm not exactly a motor head), partly because making my car look different helps with theft prevention, and partly because I wanted my car to be even prettier. My car. My pretty green car.
My car was the clean car. It was clean in the eco sense (did I mention it's a Prius?), but also in the sense that *I* was the driver. My passengers were told in no uncertain terms that they took their garbage with them when they left the vehicle; my husband got to leave bottles and chargers and spare change and whatnot in his car, but my car was pristine, goshdarned it. My pretty green car.
Over the years, Things Happened to the car. One of my kids, while driving it, got extra friendly with a pick-up truck, and part of the car got crumpled. I loved my car, but I didn't love it enough to shove many-thousand$ of dollar$ into one crumpled side panel. So the car got crumpled on the outside, but at least it was still mine on the inside.
Then I bought my bike (the SPDM), and I bought my sons some bikes, and I worked hard on reducing our family's car usage, which mostly means reducing my own usage, because I try to not be obnoxious about other people's habits. This means I used my car less and less frequently . . . nowadays, I climb inside my car maybe 6 times a month, and the majority of times I'm in the car, there are many of us together. I'm not doing much solo driving these days.
Eventually, we got to the point where we agreed to sell "my husband's" car and just have this one car between us. And so, now the inside of the car isn't mine any more. You can tell it's not "mine" by the potato chip bags and gatorade bottles that rattle around on the floor . . . it's a family car, not a Miser Mom car.
Last month, on a particularly icy day, my husband decided to introduce the car to somebody's fence. The car and the fence didn't get along particularly well, and both came away from the encounter needing a bit of TLC and counseling. My car, in particular, needed a "new" bumper. The body shop we took it to found a salvaged bumper somewhere and put it on. They called my husband to tell him about it, and to add that the color of the bumper didn't quite match the color of the car . . .
. . . and while my husband was recovering from his laughing fit, they added, "This is the point where we usually point out that for Z-hundred-dollars, we can paint the bumper to match . . . "
. . . and while my husband was recovering from the next round of guffawing, they added, ". . . but we're going to assume that you don't want us to paint the bumper." My husband assured him that, married as he is to ME, why no-thank-you-we-don't-want-to-fork-over-money-for-bumper-paint.
Given the gold and silver swirls I paid for long ago, the silver bumper actually doesn't look horrendously bad . . . on this car that's so danged old it has a cassette deck, I kid you not.
My car, it's not a pretty green car anymore. It's gotten a lot of use, and more and more, the use is coming not-from-me. I kind of like having a car with a cassette deck that no longer works, but a radio that works fine. A car that's so ugly, and so distinctively colored and dented, that we don't have to worry about auto theft.
I kind of like having a car I don't need so much.
I bought my car back in 200X, with X = a very small number (2? 3? I can't remember). It was the Greenest of Green cars, back in the day: Green because it was a first-generation Prius. Green because I bought it used, not new. Green because it was actually the color green.
I paid real money (!) to add gold-and-silver swirls, partly so I could tell it apart from other cars in parking lots (I'm not exactly a motor head), partly because making my car look different helps with theft prevention, and partly because I wanted my car to be even prettier. My car. My pretty green car.
My car was the clean car. It was clean in the eco sense (did I mention it's a Prius?), but also in the sense that *I* was the driver. My passengers were told in no uncertain terms that they took their garbage with them when they left the vehicle; my husband got to leave bottles and chargers and spare change and whatnot in his car, but my car was pristine, goshdarned it. My pretty green car.
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| Passenger door, with texture added. |
Over the years, Things Happened to the car. One of my kids, while driving it, got extra friendly with a pick-up truck, and part of the car got crumpled. I loved my car, but I didn't love it enough to shove many-thousand$ of dollar$ into one crumpled side panel. So the car got crumpled on the outside, but at least it was still mine on the inside.
Then I bought my bike (the SPDM), and I bought my sons some bikes, and I worked hard on reducing our family's car usage, which mostly means reducing my own usage, because I try to not be obnoxious about other people's habits. This means I used my car less and less frequently . . . nowadays, I climb inside my car maybe 6 times a month, and the majority of times I'm in the car, there are many of us together. I'm not doing much solo driving these days.
Eventually, we got to the point where we agreed to sell "my husband's" car and just have this one car between us. And so, now the inside of the car isn't mine any more. You can tell it's not "mine" by the potato chip bags and gatorade bottles that rattle around on the floor . . . it's a family car, not a Miser Mom car.
Last month, on a particularly icy day, my husband decided to introduce the car to somebody's fence. The car and the fence didn't get along particularly well, and both came away from the encounter needing a bit of TLC and counseling. My car, in particular, needed a "new" bumper. The body shop we took it to found a salvaged bumper somewhere and put it on. They called my husband to tell him about it, and to add that the color of the bumper didn't quite match the color of the car . . .
. . . and while my husband was recovering from his laughing fit, they added, "This is the point where we usually point out that for Z-hundred-dollars, we can paint the bumper to match . . . "
. . . and while my husband was recovering from the next round of guffawing, they added, ". . . but we're going to assume that you don't want us to paint the bumper." My husband assured him that, married as he is to ME, why no-thank-you-we-don't-want-to-fork-over-money-for-bumper-paint. Given the gold and silver swirls I paid for long ago, the silver bumper actually doesn't look horrendously bad . . . on this car that's so danged old it has a cassette deck, I kid you not.
My car, it's not a pretty green car anymore. It's gotten a lot of use, and more and more, the use is coming not-from-me. I kind of like having a car with a cassette deck that no longer works, but a radio that works fine. A car that's so ugly, and so distinctively colored and dented, that we don't have to worry about auto theft.
I kind of like having a car I don't need so much.
I wonder if my car’s casette player works... I wonder if any of my old cassettes work. After my high school boom box started eating them I stopped playing them. It gets so hot here cassettes melt in cars so I will probably never know.
ReplyDeleteIt is entirely possible that the cassette player works fine, but that the tapes themselves have melted over time. All of them, though? They all sound kind of wa-wuuuh-wa-wa-whuuuuuh, when they should be bop-bop-bop-bop, if that makes sense.
DeleteI recently lost my 2004 station wagon (which had both a CD player and a cassette deck!) to someone who ran a red light. No one was seriously hurt, thank goodness! I will have a scar on my scalp to commemorate the occasion. Luckily our car use was also quite low already, and we have decided to give the no-car thing a try for a while. There are a few types of trips that we are having trouble finding a good solution for, but for the most part, between walking/biking, public transit, and kind friends we like to carpool with, it's been a pretty easy adjustment. We are very fortunate to be able-bodied and work near (or in my case, in) our home. I've noticed the biggest negative thing for me is the loss of feeling like I am self-sufficient in this area of life and like I am a generous person who can offer rides to people. Now as a ride-accepter instead of a ride-giver, I feel like I'm mooching (my friends of course have never said anything of the sort).
ReplyDeleteWe're renting a car soon for our first road trip since the accident. A side effect I find amusing of becoming not-a-car-owner is that now when I drive, I will mostly be driving shiny new cars! This one will probably have an mp3 player I can hook right into my phone! Oh brave new world!
I second the awesome side effect of renting cars that are actually . . . modern.
DeleteEven more the appreciation for doing good deeds. I have friends and relatives who can't drive by choice or for medical reasons, and I have friends who have gotten laid up with Very Bad Diseases, and a bunch of my driving has been to, or with, or for them. It's one of the things (aside from having a husband who loves driving) that keeps me from going to a zero-car household.
I'm so glad you're okay after the crash, but I'm sorry you had to deal with that. Car crashes . . . the more I pedestrian my life, the more I think of automobiles as a version of background violence that permeates our culture. Sigh.
Thanks. It was a bad day, but I am just overwhelmed with gratitude that it wasn't worse than it was. I lost my car and had to get some minor medical attention, but I was well enough that I could walk a mile each way to get that medical attention, and all passengers were unharmed. I hit my head enough to get a nasty laceration but had no brain injury, which really could have turned my world upside down.
DeleteDriving is one of those things where I wonder what people 200 years from now will think of how we did things. Maybe not to the extent I wonder that about chemotherapy ("They poisoned themselves to try to get over diseases! It sometimes worked, but it made them so sick as a side effect!"), but I bet people will have an easier, less dangerous form of transportation that still allows them to get where they want to go when they want to go there in the not too distant future.
Love it! We too have an old car (a 2004 corolla that I bought in 2005) with a cassette deck. I know mine is working because I use it to plug in my phone and some actual real cassettes from high school. In fact, I just discovered a big box of cassettes the other day. I knew I had some books on tape, and the local hospital is doing a book sale. I read that they take cassette books on tape, so I managed to declutter a big chunk of my tapes. It is delightful that I am still getting use out of these items from half my lifetime ago.
ReplyDeleteAh, books on tape. One year, for my husband's birthday, I actually read "Les Miserables" onto cassette tapes, so he could listen on his commute. Well, I recorded about 2/3 of that book . . . it was something like 27 90-minute tapes, and then I ran out of steam/time. He listened to what I had recorded, and then finished the book as a book later. *Memories*.
DeleteThat is a pretty epic present. Wow.
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