Incoherent Scribblings

Almost Done!

OK, OK, I know that I said I was only going to work a little longer on “Purr-plexed” and then put her away in favor of the baby sampler, but… she is so damn cute and I am pretty sure I can get her done over the weekend, so once again I have changed my mind on what I am going to do! Hee hee… Isn’t it great being a girl?

Car Fever

So, I was out browsing around trying to think of something interesting to blog about when I happened upon this, The Friday Foofah. It is just another meme, but one of today’s questions made me think of a time when cars meant something to me.

Do you own a car? What make and model? Do you consider cars a boring point A to B appliance or does talk of V8s and turbo-charging make your eyes light up?

Currently, we have a car but I don’t care too much about it. In fact, I don’t even drive much anymore. It wasn’t always that way though… I used to be quite a car girl.

Not only did I grow up in rural America where cars mean something; my dad was a mechanic for many years before he became a policeman and most of my friends were typical red-blooded Iowa farm boys and mechanics’ children. From a very early age I was surrounded by the magic of cars.

In high school, cruising up and down Main Street was a weekend ritual for us and it was commonplace to gather at the bottom of Main Street or in the grocery store parking lot and peer under the hood for hours at a time. I seldom offered opinion, but was a keen observer and the guys were always impressed with the questions that I asked.

In the Chevy vs. Ford debate I was a firm Ford supporter with Mopar (that would be Chrysler, Plymouth, Dodge for you non-car folk) running a close second. We drove old muscle cars like Thunderbirds, Cameros, Mustangs, Cougars, Chevelles, Monte Carlos, Firebirds, and Chargers. We raced them down dusty gravel roads on Friday and Saturday night and spent all day Sunday tinkering with them.

Even after high school I had car fever and when I got my little red Mustang I loved the hell out of that car. But I also had dreams of a newer, faster, and sleeker car. And just a few months after college graduation I put a downpayment on a sparkling new white Dodge Avenger. I vowed that I loved my car so much I would rather sleep in it than give it up.

However, the harsh realities of adulthood came crashing down on me one freezing Iowa winter day less than a year after I got my car. It came to my attention that I might indeed have to make the decision between paying the rent on my little heated efficiency apartment and making my car payment. My luck improved, I got a better job and it never came to that. Nevertheless, from then on I realized that my car was much more expendable than I would have ever thought.

Some months later I was in a wreck that totaled my little sports car and some months later still the car I got to replace it was repossessed after I made some bad decisions which included trusting my ex-boyfriend to get a job and help me with the payments. (Oh, but that is a whole other blog!)

My car fever was forever extinguished when less than two years after I was dreamily strolling around the showroom floor looking at little red sports cars I was driving a 25 year old four-door Chevy Malibu. (A Chevy! Oh, the horror!) I had learned my lesson: Never again would I put so much enthusiasm into a hunk of metal and an engine. From then on cars just became a way to get from Point A to Point B.

And so, even now when we have a cute little two-door BMW, I am not too attached to it. I don’t sit low in the driver’s seat and fly down the autobahn at 150kph (95mph). I merely load it up with my weekly groceries and tell myself that no matter how fast it might go, how great it would feel to have that steering wheel under my hands, or how interested my high school friends would be to look under the hood and inspect its engine, it is just a car and that it isn’t such a big deal anymore.

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BTW: This is my 300^th blog entry! WOW!!!