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Home > Michelle's Blog > Previous Postings > 08/21/07
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Previous Postings |
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August 21, 2007:
Do You Name Your Material Possessions?
I got my first car when I was 18 years old. My parents told each of the 10 kids that they would buy us our first car, as long as it was not more than $500 and if we went to college. So I got a royal blue Honda Civic – it was pretty old and beat up, but I didn’t care because it was mine. So the first thing I wanted to do was name my car. I named mine “Ella” (it was a little different than this, but the name has been changed to protect the innocent).
Off I went in “Ella” with my worldly possessions loaded up, bouncing down the road to my new college. Only, one thing had been forgotten – Michelle, who had never had a car before, did not know that you needed to check the oil. As a young woman, I knew about gas and I knew how to add “fix-a-flat” when I got a flat tire (that stuff was like gold when I was in college), but I didn’t know a thing about oil checking. And I certainly did not think of getting the oil changed. Why would I do that? It ran just fine.
About 8 months later, I was driving down the road and I heard a very loud noise and saw a lot of smoke billowing out from under the hood of my car. I pulled over and opened the hood. (I was lucky I even knew how to do that, but I figured it out.) It was a mess and I didn’t know what to do. So now, just for a moment – stop reading this story and try to guess what I did…
…did you guess walk away? Cuz that’s what I did. I left the car on the side of the road, hopped in with some friends and walked away. “Ella” was dead and I left her there to go to car heaven. Of course, my dad was not real happy with that, but I later could not remember where cuz it was basically in the middle of nowhere and I didn’t know how to get back there. (No, there was no drinking involved – just plain, old-fashioned blondness…)
Well, my next car was purchased by my parents so I could go back to college, which obviously I needed. It was a Toyota Corolla. This one was named “Hortense”. I was given a full lesson on oil changing, spraying silicon into my distributor cap, and even learned how to change a tire, although I still liked the “fix-a-flat” solution better.
I drove that car the rest of my college days until I graduated, to which my parents bought me a Dodge Aries K car.
You all know the car – square, boring and today, we see a lot of them parked at senior apartments and assisted living facilities. I had to put it in my name and pay the payments, but they picked it out and basically told me that was my car. As a new college grad with my first “real” job, of course I wanted a red, flashy cool car. But, the K car did have bucket seats and a luggage rack, so I said, OK. I named that one “Richy” after my dad, since he picked it out.
So now I want to know, did any of you name your cars or any of your other possessions? Please share….michelleb@agvantage.com…write soon!
Keep smiling! Honk, Honk!
MichelleP.S. By the way, I did have to pay my parents back for “Hortense”, if you were wondering.
