Good-Bye, Junior

Today was a rather emotion-filled day. Well, not all of it. Just the last hour of it. The earlier part of the day was actually shit-boring-tedious, like all my days at work (which I just realized I've never discussed here . . . I'll have to do a post one day on what it's been like working as an admissions coordinator for a graduate school while doing my own admissions process to other grad schools). But this evening I did something that made me sad and nostalgic and melancholy: I sold my car. Well, perhaps not sold outright. More like traded for past debts acquired from a couple of quarters of post-bac work, living expenses, and bail-outs. But all the same, my car -- a car that I got when he was two years old, and have had for seven years -- is no longer my car.

I got Junior in 2004. My dad had bought him brand-spankin' new in 2002, and although he loved him, he wanted something that was a little more comfortable and gas-efficient for that grueling drive up and down "the hill" -- the 20-mile trek into and out of the San Bernardino Mountains, where my parents have lived since 1994. It's a trek that puts more than miles on cars -- it puts miles on drivers. So he splashed out on a BMW, which ended up in my mom's hands about two months after he bought it (he took her Honda Pilot) -- a foregone conclusion as far as my siblings and I were concerned. We all thought it amusing that they even pretended that the Beamer was for him, but I digress.

So in 2004, my parents did the incredibly generous thing of giving me Junior -- a cute little white Honda CRV. My mom and brother drove it out from California (I think they both still have nightmares from that trip), and my at-the-time husband and I christened him "Bradley Junior" after me ol' dad. And Junior became our go-to guy. He had great clearance for snow (although we did get stuck a few times in three-foot-deep drifts), 4WD, good traction, was comfy, had plenty of room for all our crap (like the carriers of three yowling cats), but still got good gas mileage, and was kind of sporty and fun. Junior saw a lot of driving. One of our favorite things to do when we were in Ohio (and in California, too, although not as much) was to go on drives. We'd just get in the car and go -- north, south, east, or west, it didn't matter. And we'd talk, and stop at little gas stations or convenience stores for munchies, and watch the Ohioan countryside roll past. We got lost a lot (my ex never had a fantastic sense of direction), but we always found our way back.

Junior took us to school every day, and acquired two generations of Ohio State stickers: his first a sticker placed proudly on the rear window by my mom the day she rolled into Columbus with Junior and my brother, ready to hand him -- well, both hims, probably -- off to his new parents; the second placed reverentially by me on the replaced rear window after a couple of prats smashed it to get an empty computer monitor box. He also acquired a huge "RAMMSTEIN" sticker (gone and not replaced -- it really was enormous), a smaller Rammstein cross on one side window, and a Slipknot "S" on another side window, as well as a couple of Buckeye bead necklaces, a Rammstein necklace, and a grad tassel all hanging from the rearview mirror. (Yes, I like Rammstein. Yes, I will be seeing them May 22nd when they make one of their rare US appearances.) He became habitually covered in pet fur -- dog or cat, take your pick, I have a traveling menagerie -- scratches on the dashboard where I put my feet up during long drives, and now has tiny little pockmarks of rust, which is apparently what you get living in a state where salt + snow = short life for cars. He has a permanent ice scraper and set of chains in the back, old parking permits from Ohio State in the glove compartment, and collections of Nalgene water bottles under the seats.

I'll still ride in Junior for the next few months, of course, since he's been traded to one of the people with whom I currently live, but he's no longer mine. Why did I trade/sell him? Well, for one thing, I'm such a naughty driver that my car insurance is $178/month (no, seriously, it really is -- and please note, I said "naughty", not "bad"). That is not something I will be able to afford on my sparse $1400/month stipend. Then there's the price of gas -- $4.11 f*&%in' a gallon, REALLY? -- which I can also not afford. And then, of course, there's all the little maintenance costs of a car -- tires, oil changes, new windshield wipers -- other stuff I . . . just . . . can't . . . afford (I am going to be so poor). It was the smart/necessary thing to do. But it still makes me sad.

This car carried me and three of my five cats across the country, when my ex and I moved from Ohio to California. For five days, 16 hours a day, Junior absorbed the yowling and crying and howling of three pissed-off cats, across 10 states, with music blaring out of the six-disc CD changer (I swear, by the time we reached California, I was completely deranged). He took me up and down "the hill" when I lived in Lake Arrowhead and worked in San Bernardino. He carried my things from our house to my new place of residence when I got divorced. I've sobbed in him, laughed in him, been grumpy in him -- although I don't think I've ever done the naughty in him. He's been my friend, always reliable, always there, always supportive.

Good-bye, Junior. I know that your new owner will take care of you, although he won't love you the way that I did. And because of that, I feel very, very guilty.