You know what sucks? You know what really sucks? You know what really really sucks?
I'll give you a hint. Hell, I'll tell you the whole thing. It's people that don't know how to drive their piece of shit cars and therefore totally fuck up the flow of traffic so that you, you who are driving along so innocently behind them, rocking out to your Dave Matthews Band CD that you JUST CAN'T STOP LISTENING TO, get stuck at Every. Red. Light. along a four mile stretch of PCH during evening rush hour.
They suck.
Don't even blame the car. I used to drive a a '93 Ford Tempo, the Pimpo Tempo, as it was so lovingly called. I know for a fact that 10 year old cars don't take five freaking minutes to accelerate from 0 to 40. In fact, I miss my old Pimpo Tempo, because that car would totally have kicked the rusted ass of that stupid Buick that made my commute home yesterday a complete and utter cluster fuck.
I miss my Pimpo Tempo. Unfortunately I killed her along an icy stretch of I-65 in Seymour, Indiana during my freshman year in college. I was sneaking back to Indianapolis from Kentucky, where I insanely spent my freshman year of college, to have an illicit rendezvous with a boy that I had met over my winter vacation. This is the point where my mom and dad would say "Ha! We knew it! You weren't really coming to visit us!" Because I may have not told them I was coming and was planning on crashing at my friend Nick's house when I wasn't off doing the illicit things that the illicit rendezvous with the the previously mentioned boy would include. (But it's too late now, Mom and Dad! You titled that replacement car to me a year and a half ago! It's mine now! MINE!) But then the black ice happened.
Black ice is a bitch. Black ice doesn't look like ice. It just looks like the road is wet. Until your car is playing the role of a ping pong ball and the guardrails on both sides of the freeway are the paddles. Then you're all "Oh, yeah, guess that wasn't just wet." And then your dad has to drive 40 miles from home on a snowy night over more black ice and come pick you up since your car is totalled.
We went the next day to buy a new car. Being carless wasn't really an option since I went to school in another state and had class on Monday, so that was the day that I got my current car. A red 2003 Dodge Neon. I know, I know. Just allow your jaws to drop to the floor and take all of that it. I know you're jealous. Those feelings are natural. I'll give you a moment.
...
The Neon was pretty much my only choice. I could have gotten a Mitsubishi Lancer (I know, the options were just awesome!), but I didn't have an uncle that worked for Mitsubishi and could get us a green slip for a few thousand dollars off, but I did have one that worked for Chrysler, so it's funny how all of that worked out, right? Right? Of course at the ripe young age of 18, I didn't have any credit and couldn't get financed, so my parents had to buy the car and I had to make the payments. And so last year, FINALLY, at the age of 23, I made the final payment to them, and that Neon became officially mine. ALL MINE. I know, we've already established that you're jealous, I get it.
Oh, my Neon, the memories, the memories. Like the time I drove it across the country when I moved to California. Or the time I went camping with my brother and backed up and one of the back tires went over this little ledge in the woods and then all of my brother's friends had to push it forward again since the car was spinning its other wheels and the drop was about a foot too high for any of us to be comfortable with just backing the rest of the car up and hoping that the bumper survived. The Neon that my sister almost threw up in. The car that sat in my driveway for almost six months after Edgar and I started dating because he would chaffuer us everywhere and we would carpool to work and he would always spend the night and I saved so much money on gas! The same Neon where my dad gleefully found a shattered pipe for smoking The Marijuana in my trunk. (Too late, Dad! The car is still mine!) Want to know what he shattered it with? A case of 24 Bud Light cans. That we were taking with us to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to see the Indy 500. Beer that we would then be drinking while we were there. While I was only 20. Haha, Dad, can't be mad that I lied about why I was coming home that night when I totalled my car because I've got stuff on you too! You enabled my underage drinking! (He knows I love him). Like that time you had too much tequila at my high school graduation party and you slept in the backyard! (He actually holds his liquor really well; just not that night. Probably the fact that his little girl was graduating high school and he watched her take a tequila shot without flinching and realized "Shit, she already knows how to drink. We're in trouble.")
The same Neon that is now trying to kill me. Because of all of that time sitting idle once Edgar and I were together, the car has got some issues. Ahem, stupid Buick in front of me on PCH, I still don't drive like a 76 year old lady. It stutters and sputters for the first few minutes after you turn it on. It's like the engine is trying to will itself to keep working. I've had tune-ups done and we've been told the engine is working fine, so I just think it's lazy. The car had an attack of The Lazies yesterday at the most inoportune time, though. It was completely unexpected, because I was almost home from work, and I never have any problems with it once it's had a few minutes of good solid driving on it. It had had about 25 at that point, so there are no excuses for your behavior, Red Neon! I was turning left at a light after sitting idle for a minute, and about halfway through the turn, instead of continuing to accelerate, it did it's sputter and stutter thing and stayed at that slow takeoff speed and I was about THIS CLOSE (imagine me holding my thumb and forefinger really close to one another, like I had just finished saying "Yeah, that date, not good, because, you know..." and then I hold my fingers really close together) to getting slammed into by a huge SUV coming from the opposite direction that I had turned in front of. If the car hadn't have done that, I totally would have had time to clear the intersection before the other guy even got to it, no brakes needed, but because of that stupid car I almost died six blocks from my apartment. But they say most accidents happen within 10 miles of home, right? So maybe I would have just been trying to average out the earlier accident. Anyways, I all of a sudden had become THE STUPID BUICK DRIVER THAT DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO DRIVE HER PIECE OF SHIT CAR.
Funny how things come full circle like that, huh?
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