First Car Meme

Jenners from Life With a Little One and More is going all the way through the meme alphabet, and today she did a First Car Meme that she got from The Bookkitten. Since my first car has come up 3 times over the last couple of days, I felt compelled to do this one.

1. What was your first car?
My first car was a 1981 Subaru GLS hatchback that I called Ruby Sue. Her full name was Ruby Sue Subaru. This is her parked in front of the house we lived in when I was in high school. An old boyfriend once said that she looked like a roller skate, which, once he said it, I could totally see.

2. How did you acquire said car?
My dad gave it to me for my 17th birthday. It was the first car he had ever bought brand new. I was thrilled, but I couldn’t drive a straight gear. He took me to the country, parked on a hill, made me get in the driver's seat, and we didn’t leave until I got us over that hill. I was completely frustrated, but my dad was very patient. After a lot of stalling, I made it up and over the hill.

3. Were you involved in choosing the car?
Nope. It was a gift.

4. Did you go on any road trips?
Did I???? Of course! I drove my friends and me to Myrtle Beach the summer after I graduated. I drove pretty much all over Virginia and a whole lot of North Carolina.

5. Did you ever get into an accident in the car?
Yes, but it wasn’t serious. An old woman pulled over directly in front of me on an acceleration/deceleration lane. She left me no room and I had no choice except to run up on the curb. It was on a bridge, so thankfully we weren’t going too fast or else I might have ended up in the river. Fortunately the worst thing that happened was a flat tire.

6. Did you use the car for any--ahem--"romantic activities"?
No…wait, yes. I was forgetting how long I had her, so that means…hmm…yeah, there were some “romantic activities” experienced in that car. I’ll leave it at that.

7. How many miles were you able to put on the car before its demise?
I don’t know how many miles were on it when Daddy gave it to me, but it had considerably over 100,000 miles on it when I traded it in. Maybe 130,000 or something?

8. How did the car meet its demise?
Aw…she just stopped going. I traded her in for a Nissan Sentra who didn’t have nearly her personality. She had to be towed in to the dealership.

9. Do you miss your first car?
I actually hadn’t thought about her for a long time, but I guess I kind of do. She was my first car love.

10. Fondest memories of the car?
Oh lord! There were so many. But, here are two…

I got my first speeding ticket driving her, while driving from Radford, VA where I was going to college, to Richmond, VA where my boyfriend was going to school. I had three friends with me and we were singing along with tapes and talking. My speedometer went up to 85 miles per hour (the speed limit was 55 mph on the interstate then), and when I saw the state trooper’s lights and looked down, the needle was bouncing off the far end of the speedometer. He didn’t even tell me how fast I was going because it was just ridiculous. I could easily have been charged with reckless driving, but he was extremely nice and recorded my ticket as only 19 miles over the speed limit at 74 mph.

One Easter morning, my step-dad knocked on my bedroom door and told me that someone had left me a present. I got out of bed and went to the livingroom with the expectation that my boyfriend had gotten me an Easter present and left it with my parents. But my step-dad told me my present was in my car. I walked out to my car in my pj’s, still all gooey-eyed from sleep and I couldn’t figure out what I was seeing. There were…things…in my car. Pastel things. Pastel things with tall pointy ears and paws holding carrots up to their mouths. My car was FULL of inflatable bunny rabbits that, I learned later, were stolen out of people’s yards all over town by my friends Beth, Kelly and Rommy, who then crammed them into my car. Okay, they broke the law and some kids were probably really disappointed on Easter morning that their bunnies were gone from their front lawns, but it was FUN-NY!!!