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Originally posted February 2005

I Sold My Shitty Car

       In 1999, my parents got a wild hair and took me to Mississippi to buy a new car. They were trading in two cars
and were looking to spend somewhere around 8 or 9 thousand dollars. We walked away that same day with this 1998 Ford Mustang.  It had 10,000 miles on it and smelled like a cigarette, but I was more than excited to drive it.

       In 2005, last week, I got a wild hair and took my car about 3 blocks down the street to the body shop. I was told I needed at least $1500 worth of body work to go along with the $1500 worth of engine work I was already aware of. I was trying to sell it for $3000 but I think it was obvious that I couldn't have cared less, because I ended up walking away from that body shop with a big fat $1200 check. I literally walked away because I just sold my car.

       Now I walk everywhere. And it's pretty convenient to evade car insurance bills and steep gas prices. And I'm glad I'm cutting down on pollution and all of that nonsense. But this isn't about what I'm getting out of selling my car - it's about the memories that are forever stuck in the rear view mirror of my very first car. They are as follows:

       1999/ I've never been one to care much about the looks, engine size, sound system, etc. of a car. But in my senior year at Covington High School, it was still neat to drive a nice looking car. Everyone wanted to ride in it, everyone wanted to look at it, and I let a lot of people ride in it and even more people look at it. But things changed when later that week, two more people got the same exact car: The school gay-guy and the school nerdy-ugly redneck girl. I'm sure these people are very successful and happy now and I would never still label them with these childish high school tags unless I were writing a column about them on the internet. One time they parked their cars right next to mine and took a bunch of pictures of them. I thought that was nerdy but now that makes me laugh.

       2000/ For no reason at all, me and my friend Dustin decide to throw a large coke at these two Mexican kids making out in their car at a Putt-Putt parking lot. Turns out they weren't making out OR Mexican - they were just two skater punk kids who were ready for trouble! They chased us around the city for about 45 minutes and finally extracted revenge when they threw a cup of ice at us. But our window was down so it sucked.

       2001/ My sister was trying out for the cheerleading team for the 9th time in her life. She had never made it once. My mom had just got a new job and here is what's important about all of that: If my sister made the cheerleading team, then my mom wouldn't be able to pick her up from school because of her new job, so we would need to figure out what to do with the car. Because I lived on campus at LSU, my car wasn't 100% necessary. Somehow she makes the team and I end up letting her use my car for the year. She got in 4 car accidents, one when she ran into a parked car in a parking lot.

       2002/ I get the car back and Jared's mom sends him a care package with a "Sportsman Honey Bun" inside. It's a gross little honey bun inside of a camouflage wrapper and contains 48% of your daily fat needs. It's real gross and I cram it in the back of my glove compartment. Also in 2002, we throw a bag of poo on my car and then take it to the car wash to clean it off and the poo water wouldn't go down the drain so it just stuck to the pavement. We were growing up.

       2003/ One night while driving home from a party in Baton Rouge, we spy a naked guy running down the street. A major street. We followed him to the parking lot of a local restaurant and he see's us following him and he hides in a bush. We get out to talk to him and he is gross and chubby and sweaty and he begs us to take him back to campus before 2 am or he won't get accepted into his fraternity. We let him in our car and driv

	A man's treat.

e him back. On the way, however, he thinks he see's his friends car parked in McDonalds so he politely asks us to pull over and let him out. We pull up right next to the brown Trailblazer and he gets out and tries to open the passenger-side door, but it's locked. He starts to bang on the door and we are laughing at him. As we start to pull away we realize that the person driving the car is an elderly black woman. The guy runs back in our car and not knowing what else to do really, I sped away and dropped him off on campus. The next Monday morning I get a phone call from my dad wanting to know why I was trying to break into a woman's car naked. I told him my story and I think it was hard for him to believe. 

       2004/ I rag my car out completely with constant 130 mile treks in between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and make the situation worse when I start working movie and television jobs. I put more mileage on my car this year than the previous 2 combined. And I think I got the oil changed and the inside's tuned up half the amount of time. I think this may have something to do with why the car got so shitty, but I'm not a car expert so I'm not positive.

       2005/ I'm riding home from Smoothie King and I roll my window up just enough to hold the Smoothie in place. I see someone I know riding his bike and I talk to him. When he leaves, I habitually roll my window up and Smoothie oozes all over my car. There are stories just like this with pizza, cookies, spaghetti, Subway Sandwiches, burritos, and soy sauce. In all my years of owning my car, I never got the interior shampooed. And when I cleaned the car out, I found the Honey Bun in the glove compartment.

        Now it's over. I'm walking on my feet and riding streetcars and loving it. But I can't wait to regret all of this when I can't do something fun or save someone in an emergency because I don't own an automobile!

         Fuck.

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