By Love can be for people, places, and for things. This prompt was one of mine to the different forms of love that are locked in our memories. Tell me about your first car in the comments.
The Gold Brick
My first car was a family hand-me-down. Originally my Nana’s it was a gold 1994 Lexus LS400 with over 150,000 miles on it by the time I got it in 2008 at 16. The first morning I drove to cross country practice, less than a week after I got my license I ran into a brick mailbox one street over. Yes, I was playing with my iPod, I wanted to jam out. Nope, I’m never admitting that to my dad.
That car was a brick and I managed to move the mailbox a little. But I hadn’t been going too fast, no lasting damage but the transmission was always a little off center. Automatic transmission, when I put it in drive, that spot was a little farther back than it should have been. Despite our rough start, that car was freedom. I could now go meet friends and do things without my parents. Not that they were ever super strict about where we could and couldn’t go. But as a high school kid they were a buzz kill.
The best summer in that car was the one before my senior year. I literally had shirtless cross country guys hanging out my sunroof one day. No idea how I didn’t get pulled over. It might sound silly to feel so fondly of a summer spent running but that was my first one of real freedom. Those of us on the varsity team and a few JV members would meet up at the lake or some other location almost every day to run a few miles then go to breakfast or swim. It was this weird combination of responsible and wild.
As a married adult in my 30’s I wonder what my 18 year old self would think about having a mortgage, a dog, a boring 9 to 5. There are some things she would be proud of me for and some others, maybe not so much. 18 year old me would be very happy about both Keltin and Bear. She probably wished I had a cooler car though. I loved Corvettes and Aston Martins then. I wanted to go fast. Adult me would still drive a powder blue Aston Martins given the chance but for all the speed it wouldn’t provide the freedom of that old Lexus sedan.
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McGee Travel Tales 