My Precious

For twelve years I’ve driven a 1988 Toyota Corolla. It’s been a great little car, but bit by bit, it’s become…less functional. The AC never did work well, and in Tucson that’s pretty bad. We locked the keys in it shortly after getting it, and back before cell phones and also on our way to the child’s Christmas play, we broke one of the small side windows to get in. The heater hose connection rusted out, so we blocked that off. The trunk lock broke, so I pried it out in order to get into the trunk and used a bungee cord to keep it from flapping. The paint faded. The windows got cranky. The radio gave up.

But still she ran. We replaced the water pump once, and the alternator another time. The timing belt cost me $200, but didn’t ruin the car because Corollas aren’t made that way, or at least this one isn’t. I replaced the battery once, I think. I had the carburetor prodded more than once, but my miracle-mechanic (that’s what I call him, not what he calls himself) didn’t want to try taking it apart. He feared with a car already twenty years old that if he took the carburetor apart, it would never go back together. Same for the transmission, when the car started being difficult about starting because it didn’t want to believe it was in “park.”

I learned to work around all her little foibles, and get where I needed to go. I developed a knack for avoiding the splash from oncoming traffic when driving in the rain. When I needed to move something, I improvised (we crammed a wingback-type chair in the trunk once) or called on a friend for help. The kid developed a liking for hiding in the trunk while the car was parked in the carport, and wouldn’t understand why I didn’t just let her ride there when we were going somewhere. I learned just when and how my car was likely to die on me, and to coast from the left turn lane of Grant into the far right lane of Country Club, make a right into the school parking lot, and glide right into my designated space at work, wrestling with the no-power steering to make a perfect 10 of a park, equidistant between the lines.

Now my car doesn’t die, and I park her all the way at the end of the lot. 😀

Yep, I’ve updated. Gone from a red 1988 Toyota Corolla to a red 2007 Toyota Corolla.

When I got home with the new car, my landlord looked at it and smiled and told me that he was going to bring me his car, and whatever I just did to my car I needed to do to his.

I keep coming up with excuses to drive. Errands I’ve been putting off forever? Suddenly must be accomplished now. Also, I seem to be getting lost a bit. The grocery store a mile away and a bit to the north and east is a lot more than a mile away if I go south out of the driveway and then turn west.

Color me a very VERY happy camper. And also a bit of a protective snarly driver. “Get away from my car,” I growl at traffic. “Watch it!” “Back off!” “Pick a lane, jerk!” “CROSS AT THE CROSSWALK YOU BASTARDS YOU NEARLY GOT ME REAR-ENDED!”

Roomie jokingly called the car “my precious” in Gollum’s voice. Now I call the car that, without Gollum’s voice.

Except when I walk up to her in the parking lot after a ten hour day. Then I say, “Hey, baby,” in sexy pick-up line voice. “I missed you so much. Let’s run away together.”