It’s just a car. Metal, plastic
The Wolfsburg offers the luxury features of the pricier GLS—leather seats with warmers, a sunroof—and the same surprisingly big engine, but without the maintenance demands of the GLS’s non-turbo motor. It’s in the middle, just right and just enough.
I knew none of this, however, as I slid into the leather seat, turned the key and backed out of our driveway. My Papa, now deceased, was my first passenger, and we tooled around the same block he used to push my little red tricycle around. The oohs and ahs said, hugs and thank-yous
We cruised over to
It’s not just a car
My car was always clean, but always full of the excess of my many extracurriculars—potted ferns for the assisted-living home, bulletin board decorations and a stapler for the health department, and slightly burnt cookies for my AP history class after another 2 a.m. stress-relieving baking session.
The driver’s side door kept all my Taylor Swift albums for easy access, and the glove compartment held several pairs of sunglasses, red shutter shades and cheap gold aviators for my unprepared passengers to slip on. Loose pages of homework and church bulletins usually piled up in the passenger seat, and a Bible rested in the backseat pocket. A few tennis balls, left over from hundreds of hours of private lessons and school practices, rolled across the floor.
Shiny, white dog hair coated all of it, because, as the only one of our family who openly admitted to liking our finicky chihuahua Princess, I wound up taking her to the vet. My backseat was just long enough to drape my glitter-streaked prom dress across and wide enough for my graduation gown. More often, though, it held my tennis bag or salty beach towels or the kids I babysat.
It’s just a car
I was grateful I could bring my Jetta along with me to
Inevitably, people would leave trash behind, like straw wrappers and greasy receipts, frustrating me no end. I was embarrassed when my car was dirty and I had passengers, especially when those passengers were boys—especially one particular boy. I soon mastered steering with one hand, freeing up the other to hold his.
It’s just a car. More accurately, it était just a car. But then I gave away my keys, and he forgot to hit the brakes. We were fine; it was not. I left my beloved car in a lonely junkyard littered with cars that looked like no one had ever cared about them. Mine looked no different. The wipers had snapped off, and a deep, jagged crack divided the windshield in two. Scratches laced the lovely exterior. The entire front was smashed in, the hood all curled up, just like I wanted to be.
It’s just a car, I repeated to myself. Just a car, my mother reminded me. Just a car, my dad assured me. But it wasn’t just a car. Maybe to the insurance agents who later came to condemn it, but not to me. My car carried a thousand memories of my grandparents and tennis matches and school dances, piano lessons and volunteer days and freshman year. It carried the story of first loves and losing them. It carried me.
I have a new car now, and it’s wonderful. It works. But I can’t remember the first song it played.
«LECTURE CONNEXE» BUMPER STICKER WISDOM PART IV: Lessons learned from the back of a car»
image 1 image: Pixabay 2 image: Pixabay 3 Volkswagen Jetta 1.8T Wolfsburg Edition photographed in USA. By IFCAR (All rights released) via Wikimedia
