Of Automobiles and Animosity.

Of Automobiles and Animosity.

Of Automobiles and Animosity.


For what seems like eons, innumerable numbers of teenagers and adults alike have drooled over the shiny masses of plastic, chrome, and industrial grade metal that we call cars. For many, a first car is something magical, something to look forward to when you turn 16 and your parents finally let you get your hands on a real steering wheel without covering their eyes and cringing (though, they will still probably do that afterward too). A car can be the prefect essence of freedom, the epitome of rebellion, or love, or escape from the drudgeries of our everyday mundane lives. A car can be sleek and beautiful and lovely. It can inspire wonder and awe. Cars can go fast. They can turn on a dime and impress unwary bystanders as they rush along with god-like speed. The Lamborghini Diablo, the Porsche Boxster S, the 2005 Saleen S7, the 4-Speed Manual 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray V8 split window coupe with a Riverside Red paint job and 300 horse power: those are the prefect cars, powerful, gleaming forms of steel, oozing finesse and cat-like grace. Those are the cars of dreams and fantasies. I’m stuck with a muddy gold 1995 Saturn SI with … maybe 5 horsepower…

A few months before my 16th birthday, my mother drove me out to the DMV. She parked in the overused, nearly empty parking lot, which was rather small for a DMV parking lot, and I waked into the flat, ancient, cream colored building with nothing but a small black bag and a book of Chinese Lore. What seemed like a year and a day later, I walked out with my small black bag, my book of Chinese Lore, an unfairly monstrous stack of neatly assorted papers, and a dinky piece of plastic that entitled me to all the rights and privileges of a fledgling driver. These rights included: Giving my parents white knuckles, making them cringe or jump, making them grip the seat with stress and dismay while still trying to hold on to their dignity, and compelling them to grab the steering wheel so as to avoid objects that magically seem to jump in my way. (I employed these rights very often and without much warning, much to the chagrin of my Mother and Father.) Unlike the typical teenager who undoubtedly would have constantly begged his parents to take him out driving. I was not at all interested. Truthfully, I was a bit curious, but curiosity is in my nature, so it couldn’t be helped. This new degree of freedom was nothing to get too excited over. After all, a good portion of our nation’s mortality rate is attributed to car accidents or something that involves a fast moving vehicle and a bone crushing impact. I am not one for danger. In fact, I often try to avoid death. Dying seems very inconvenient. Plus, I loathed my car.

Seeing my indifferent nature toward automobiles, my parents attempted to bring about my enthusiasm by suggesting a new car. I know very well that I was exceptionally lucky to have any car at all. Many teenagers learning to drive have to operate one of their parent’s cars and it is typically years before they actually get their own vehicle. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of apathy about the whole business. Some time before, my grandmother, whom I love terribly, had decided to get a new vehicle. Feeling she didn’t need her previous one, she made a very benevolent gesture and gave it to my family. It doesn’t get any better when you receive a free car, but this thing was not a car. It was a granniemobile. A VW bug was manlier. I loathed it exceptionally.

Overall, it was taken care of very well. Its outside was in mint-condition, as one would expect a old-lady car would be, and the only thing amiss in the inside were haphazard coffee and tea spills that spattered the seats and console. My Grandmother did have a great liking for tea and coffee. There was also dog hair everywhere, but such things could be vacuumed. However, one thing could not be overlooked. It was gold. I have a particular abhorrence for gold cars. They just look so cheap and shoddy, like a young woman with far too much makeup or an overly extravagant dinner set with 12 forks. Some of these vibrantly yellow cars I can take, though, but this one was the most unsightly gold I had ever seen. It was an even more vile a shade than the burnt ochre Neons I see speeding down the highways with boisterous zeal. Of course, my new car was always somewhat easy to spot in parking lots, but that was beside the point. I still loathed it.

The Saturn sat outside our house, standing out like a blinding 350 watt light bulb against the jet-black of our asphalt driveway. It would often glint gleefully at me in all its evil glory as I walked out to operate it. It was like an old trickster, a relentless fox that never ceases to perplex and confound me. Its interior was just as malicious. Apart from all the dog hair and the stains on the tawny colored interior, the console was positioned just in front of me and it obstructed my viewing horribly. I could barily see over the dash and trying to look over the hood was impossible, unless of course, I sat on a pillow, but I would not debase myself to such a level, so I refused to use one. The brake and gas sat just out of reach, so I had to scoot down in my seat just to be able to press them. This gave me even less visibility. Making things even worse, if it could, indeed, possibly get worse by this point, I had to floor it to make it up any sort of ridge, be it mountain or molehill. Oh the joys of being horribly short. I really did loathe that car. It frustrated me to no end.

One humid Tuesday just before the sun had gone off to visit Australia, my brother had to go to guitar lesson, like every other Tuesday at 6. I loved guitar lesson, but not because I was able to hear the beautiful sounds of my sibling’s Jackson Warrior, quite the opposite. There was a coffee shop right down the street from his lessons. I revel in coffee almost as much as I cherish chocolate. Lessons, therefore, were wonderful. I was finally away from the incessant prattling of my brother and the screeching whine of his abominable electric guitar. I had coffee on the table and a book in my hand. It was an ideal scene of relaxation, until that impending Tuesday night. We stopped in the parking lot just across from my beloved coffee shop and I immediately felt something was very, very wrong. I had become Tantalus. All the wonderful sensations and smells of coffee were barely out of my reach, but they seemed so close. At that moment, I thought to myself It could always be worse, just be optimistic and don’t think about anything else that could go awry, because it always seems to get worse you think that… My subconscious must have been against me, because it got worse. My dad got out and told me to take the wheel.

Up until that point I had only been watching. For 15 years I had been the passenger. I had been free to listen to music of my own choice; read a book; or intently gaze out the window, looking at nothing in particular, just daydreaming, but now the roles had switched. Now I was the driver and I had to concentrate on everything around me, everything. I had to watch street signs and speed limits. I had to look for where the road began to turn and twist. I had to figure out how to change lanes and park with other cars and stop the perfect distance away from both immobile and mobile objects. Most of all, I had to watch out for things. Telephone poles were my enemy; Mailboxes, my adversary. Curbs were my never ending foe. Other cars would become the fiercest antagonists I had ever known. The world had turned against me. Even the wildlife, which was once so quiet and docile, had turned into what seemed like killer-attack Ninjas, watching my every move with beady, sharp ebony eyes and planning my downfall with their primitive, animal brains. At that moment, the whale-like weight of impending doom weighed heavily upon me.

My dad was, is, an exceptional driver. There is nothing he couldn’t do. I knew that if I followed his instruction to the very syllable, I would live to have my Mocha Expresso, so I got out, and walked around to the other side of the car. I opened the door, and I sat down with aplomb, waiting. He got in. Then shut the door. We both buckled out seatbelts simultaneously. He took a moment to point out all the trivial little knobs and buttons and dials that lined the dash and center console. I already knew most of them, and he knew that I knew, so he didn’t waste time going over the basics. He was very cool about the situation and I wasn’t sure if I should take that as a good or bad sign, but I went with it anyway. Then he told me to adjust my seat, which I did and twist my mirrors so that I would be able to see out of them, which I also did. The Saturn had manual mirrors, which were a pain to try and configure to my liking, but eventually I prevailed. Knowing what would come next, he handed me the key, and I started the car. Many times, when one starts up a car, the engine roars like a lion, then settles down to a quiet purr of gears and pistons and combustion. The Saturn did not purr or roar, it moaned. It moaned in a loud, obnoxious tone that even the deaf would find annoying. Oh, how I loathed that car.
After it dozed off to a rattling buzz, we continued. With his permission, I took off the parking break, feeling the car list forward slightly, which was very unnerving. I put my size 8 Vans shoe down on the brake and took hold of the stick-thing in-between the front seats, shifting from park, to reverse. My mother, apparently, was not so adroit at driving in reverse, so he thought it best to teach me the correct way first. My foot still on the brake, I took a death grip on the steering wheel in front of me and made ready. Slowly taking my foot off the brake, we lurched backward in a very lazy manner. With parking spaces surrounding us like a flattened army of darkening alabaster stripes and bleached pitch-black rectangles, I was instructed to move backward. While still keeping straight, I moved through all the spaces behind me in a perfect line until there were no more I could traverse. Then I would put the unwilling vehicle into drive and move forward until I was at the other end of the lot, or until I was to near another car for my father’s liking. I remember there was a canary yellow jeep at the very end of the parking lot, so we avoided it like the plague. After a series of reverse and drive, he decided to get me to actually turn the steering wheel. Now we went around in circles, first clockwise, then counter clockwise. After a few round-abouts, we went back to reverse and drive.

Some time later, he decided that was enough, whether from obvious reasons or coffee deprivation. He told me to drive across the parking lot, and park by the Port City Java. Out of the relative safety of my 5 mph speeds and a large, unpopulated parking lot? I was not ready! Still… I needed my dose of caffeine and, after a somewhat rebellious glare at my Dad, I moved out of the parking space I was currently occupying, and drove about 20 feet to where the short trek to the other parking lot across the way began. I stayed in my own lane… most of the time and as I got closer and closer, I went faster and faster, until I was doing 10 mph. I made a series of right and left turns, thankful that barely anyone at all was here, and I inched towards my goal. I turned into the other parking lot. Now came the hard part, parking. Slowing down to a crawl, I moved in on my chosen space and not very swiftly, took it. After a bit of twisting here and there and several moments of utter chaos, I parked the car into submission. I was a little to the left and a bit askew and my nose was out a little far, but I didn’t get myself killed, and that’s all that mattered.

I deserved that large Mocha Shake. I really did. The whole event was nerve wracking, but at the same time, it really wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I had a lot more control than I thought I would. I guess playing videogames really does help. I still loathed that car, though. I would always loath that car. Not just because it was gold and not just because it was old and mean and had the power of a hamster. I hated it because I felt unsafe. The steering was loose and, while being a minor inconvenience to some, it really made me feel insecure.

Currently, I have 20 or so hours of driving. I have been beeped at. I have been yelled at. I have been passed far too many times to count. After a few close encounters with telephone poles and mail boxes and a few mishaps, that included leaving the parking break on until the tires smoked an acrid smoke that only an old parking brake could give off. My parents found it in their interest, as well as mine, to get a new car. We searched high and low for a something new, admiring Civics and Cavilers and Accords, but we never found a good car in our price range. The Saturn was not so easily dealt with. At one point, I thought I found the perfect car. It was a silver, two door Acura Integra. It was the most beautiful car that I had seen so far. It was shiny, sleek, and sporty. It had a wonderful spoiler that far surpassed any of the others. It was just perfect. It was even the right size! Unfortunately, it was not to be. The wheels were dry-rotting and the incompetent salesperson, who had locked the keys in the car, had ruined one of the doors trying to retrieve them. It would have cost too much to fix it, so, with forlorn woes of utter sadness, we left it. The oppressive tyranny of the Saturn would not be overcome so easily. It still waits for me on the driveway, waiting until I get in once more, waiting for another chance to make me uncomfortable and apprehensive, waiting for an opportunity to make me miserable. Even now, I still loathe that car and I always will.



Fin.