putting it in park

Ok, I've stopped driving long enough to come back and write a journal entry.

I remember my first car - it was a bright yellow Ford Pinto station wagon.  You could see it barreling down the road from a mile away.  My dad picked it out, even though I had worked for it (summers, evenings and weekends at the restaurant) because he wanted me to have something reliable and hard to kill.

He did a great job. I tried my best to kill that ugly car, but it would not die, and 4 years later, I traded it in for another Pinto - a sportier, less conspicuous model that eventually did die.

Somewhere down the line, I fell in love with a red Thunderbird, so I got it.  By that time, I was known as the County Breakdown Queen and God looked after me by allowing my cars to die in front of garages.  Anyway, I picked the Thunderbird because I knew I would look great sitting beside the road in it should the break down occur outside of city limits.  To be fair, I did get my money's worth out of that car - it lasted me for years until one night, on my way home, it broke down in the middle of an intersection.  I figured that was it. for me and it was time to get something that would respond to automobile CPR.

And so THEN I got an ugly Chevrolet - a big boat of a car that I named Edgar.  It was incredibly undented when I got knocked for six while sitting at another intersection waiting to make a left-hand turn.

I suppose I could go on and on, but the point is, the uglier the car, the longer it seems to last.  As of late, I had been driving a Chevy S10 - a great little truck that got me where I was going and would let nothing stop it - especially not the coyote that threw itself in front of us on the way to work one morning.  Poor coyote.

But I wanted a CAR.  And so, while visiting my brother at work, I spied it from across the parking lot.  It said SHARP in big red letters, calling me, and when I walked over to it, it winked at me.  My brother, ever the salesman, said, Girlie, you'd look mighty SHARP driving that down the road.  I had to agree.  And then he unlocked the door and said..sit in it!  And then he gave me the key and said...drive it!  And I did, and it was sharp and it was smooth and it flirted with the road and when I stepped on the brake, it was very obedient (that won BIG points with me), and  less than a week later, my silver Dodge Stratus sedan brought me home.

It's sporty.  It's reliable.  It's SHARP, and now it's mine and I have enjoyed every second of driving it EVERYwhere, and plan to drive some more.  So, if I'm conspicuously absent from J-Land and you happen to see a SHARP silver streak zoom past, it might be me and my baby.  Or it might be a comet, ya never know..

By the way, I haven't named it yet.  Any ideas?