POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

A Torrid Love Affair

Things I'm Thankful For:

12. My Car. I love my car. Here's a couple of car stories so you will understand the depth of the love affair I have with my car. Story numero uno:

Growing up my family had the most embarrassing cars ever. We had the old school blue station wagon with the wood panel siding. We also had a bright purple minivan that we called the Barney-mobile, but when I was in high school we had a puke green station wagon (it was the pride of all my high school friends, let me tell you.) Any ways, every morning and afternoon my freshman year, I had to endure the embarrassment of getting dropped off and picked up in that puke green monstrosity. So one morning, like usual, my mother and I were arguing (probably over how much make-up I had on) and I was really mad. She dropped me off on a cold winter day, and my angry self-righteous self, huffed and slammed the door shut as hard as possible to make my point. I turned to walk off, only to realize that my coat was caught in the door of the previously slammed door. I tried to pull it out. Too late. My mom had taken off with my coat and me caught in the door of the puke-mobile. So there I was, caught in the door of the ugliest car in the world, running alongside as hard as I could to avoid being drug through the parking lot,  banging on the window and screaming for my mom to stop the car so I could....uuummm....unattach myselft.  She finally realized what was going on, and it startled her, so she slammed on the brakes, after which I slammed into the side of the car with a loud thud. After the car came to a stop, I peeled myself off the side. I stood up.  Opened the door. Extracted my coat.  Slammed the door. And turned around. Only to discover there were about 200 of my peers gathered together watching the situation, dying laughing, and all pointing....at me and my car. Needless to say, I was humiliated. Not only had everyone seen my atrocious car, but they had seen me  dragged through the parking lot in my atrocious car by my atrocious (not really Mom! I love you!) mother. It was awful. To make things worse, the basketball coach came up to me, put his arms around me and said, "It's ok, Johanna, we're not laughing at you. We're laughing with you." Riiiiight.

Story number two:

When I finally got my first car, it was a white, 1988, Mazda 323  hatchback. It had vinyl seats. I would plug my Sony walkman cd player into the radio to play my Sublime cds. But whenever I drove my car over 60 mph, the sound would start to skip pretty badly, like the car was sucking energy from everything just to do. The car was a manual transmission with no power steering. To this day, I don't know I drove that thing around. It was quite the work out.  My assigned parking space in high school was on a steep incline downward. I had to wait for the entire lot to clear before I had the nerve to even try backing that car out. I pleaded with the principal to give me a new space to no avail. Anyways, one day, I waited for everyone to leave as usual, then I tried to back out. I tried as hard as I could, but it just didn't happen. I couldn't make it up the incline. I shot down the hill, over the gigantic speed bump and almost ran over my principal. Heh served him right. He came up to my car yelling and screaming at me to learn how to drive. I just cried.

So now you understand a little bit why I love my beautiful Volvo S60 with leather and a sun roof so much. I've never had a nice car and believe me, I don't take it for granted. No more puke green or bright purple or un-driveable vehicles for me. No sir, it's nothing but smooth sailing from here.

Cross-posted at Johanna Hopes.

Johanna

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