Installment #2

1988 Baby Shit Brown Mazda 626
Never earned a nickname although I could think of a few now
*the pictures in these posts are temporarily stolen from sites to represent the cars – they will be replaced with pictures of the real cars when possible – use your freaking imagination.

After the volvo was cruelly taken away from me and returned to my sister upon her return from Italy, I was left carless for awhile. Luckily, by this time, most of my friends had cars. But as Christmas of my senior year approached, family friends thought it cruel of my parents to force five drivers to share one car (my parents, myself, my sisters). You see, my senior year my dad had retired and took a job in Oak Harbor, but it turned out that if I moved up there I would be sent to the Community College for most of the school day since they were so far behind the California school system. Apparently, my mediocrity was seen as genius in Oak Harbor, and thus my still standing rule to never live there again.

So while my dad was up in Oak Harbor, and my sisters off at college in Seattle and Spokane, my mom stayed behind in Monterey so I could graduate there and we shared a cozy little house just a couple blocks from the school. Without a car, this made life easy and I even recall during the summer I rode the bus to my job at Lovers’ Point and tried rollerblading there every so often. What ever happened to that resourceful brave little Katie? Today if I didn’t have a car I’d be calling my sisters asking, “when are you going to pick me up (to be said with annoyed whiny voice)?”

Back to the story at hand. With dad and sisters FLYING in, we still only had the one car my mom usually drove. Like I said, this cruel and unusual punishment was lost on my parents, but not on their friends. They lent us their Mazda 626 for the holidays. It was sort of beat up, or well-loved if you prefer, with beaded seat covers (gotta love it) and apparently was car #5 they had just sitting around not being used. I thought it was a treasure. Best part? Wait for it…

After the holidays, I was still driving around in it and my mom called to see when we should bring it back. They told me to keep it for a while longer. I had a car again. Joy of all Joys. It was like…well…like a full tank of gas, obviously.

Now nothing could match the Volvo, but there is something special about these cars that fall into my lap. The Mazda never got a name, but I loved her as if she were my own.

• She had a tricky passenger side lock and only I knew how to open the door. This helped trap many an unsuspecting boy in my car. Imagine being a teenage boy and having a perky attractive girl have to lean across you and open your door for you. (Okay, maybe not so perky and attractive, but it sure helped the visual didn’t it?) It also prevented abrupt exits during fights from the obviously wrong person residing in the passenger seat. That’ll teach you to try and jump out before I tell you the tenth reason you are so utterly wrong.
• As mentioned before, she had these really tacky beige and brown beaded seats that really didn’t make the car any more comfortable, but seemed a part of the car and therefore were left in place.
• She was stick-shift. Ah. Yes. Stick-shift. This was a dream come true. No more driving with my foot up on the dashboard on auto-pilot. Now I was a true driver. No more begging my boyfriend to let me drive his stupid embarrassing CRX just so I could drive stick-shift (and since he still didn’t know how). Now I had my own. The Power. The Control. The Driving Experience. I had arrived.
• Finally after driving her for a few months, I decided to treat her to a carwash. Half a mile away, she died. Completely. Wouldn’t budge. Some girls just like to be dirty.

So that was that. A good run while I had her, but we towed her to the owners and apologized. But get this. I was serving on the school board (yeah, I know, big dork) and so was the family friend who had loaned me the car. I showed up for a school board meeting and he handed me the keys to his Fiat. His Fiat!

Now I don’t know much about cars, and maybe it wasn’t this exact model, but it sure looked like a 1970-ish yelllow-gold Spyder Fiat:

Now this little skank had some sort of attitude. She knew she was sexier and cooler than I was and she let me know this on a regular basis. I had to respect her for that.

• She didn’t like to start when I needed her to start. Usually right when a meter maid was writing a ticket, she would decide to play dead. “Don’t look so smooth now, Katie, do ya?”
• She caused me to do sinful things like park at an abandoned house with a certain sexy Jewish Boy, the night before our AP English Exams. The things I did in that car…well…okay, I confess, it WAS a tiny little Fiat so it was fairly PG-13. But damnitt, PG-13 by todays standards! (Sidenote: I only got a 3 on the AP test, but it was enough to get out of English 101 in college. Thank Heavenly God. And thank the Jewish Boy. And his ears…and his neck…and his lips…
• She was ALSO stick-shift although she liked to test my skills by not always going into the gear I was requesting. I became a better driver because of her. If you can start her AND handle her, you can handle any car.

Ultimately she protested completely and wouldn’t work for me. She cried for her owner, preffering his gentle loving hand to my clumsy pissed off one. After hearing of her Ghandi ways, I arrived at another School Board meeting only to be greeted by the family friend who handed me back the Mazda key with a little note that read, “I got the Mazda fixed for you. We’ll pick up the Fiat this week. Enjoy!” Hello? Do they know I’m not worthy? This guy was a POW in Vietnam and he thinks I’M suffering because I don’t have a car? I am SO not worthy.