Several years ago I used to have a really terrible car. So terrible that Adam Sandler wrote a song about my car (Ode to My Car)…well, maybe not about my car, but it sure did an excellent job describing my vehicle. (Luckily for me I didn’t have the same seat issue that Adam Sandler had with his car…Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!)
Well, anyway back to the story. The car, at the time, was about thirteen years old. It had no air conditioning (which was great given that I lived in the desert), a broken radio (so I used a boom box), and ate oil with such voracity that in comparison the cookie monster looked like he had excellent self control. Since the car was in such excellent condition I had an anything goes mentality…food ok, drinks ok, feet on the dashboard, a little white trash, but ok. The only rule I had about driving the Geo was to NEVER EVER drive it on the freeway.
The day of the “incident” I wasn’t having too good of a day. I was late to a job that I hated, and wearing a uniform that fit terribly and included a name tag. Since it was a holiday and the roads were clear I chose to break my one and only rule and drive on the freeway. I thought that since there was no one on the road I could shave a few minutes off of my commute and actually get to work on time.
Big mistake!
In the past I had envisioned break downs in the desert with no cell phone reception, or during rush hour on a busy street where I can’t push the car to the side by myself. Nothing, and I mean nothing, could have prepared me for this. For the first ten years of the car’s life the car “lived” in Minnesota. Years of salt and ice took its toll on the car and I was none the wiser.
As I was driving in the fast lane, the hood latch gave way and the hood slammed into the windshield. Not only did the hood hit the windshield creating a large horizontal crack, but the hood had also bent back so that it had conformed to the shape of the car. If I were a cat this is what my face probably would have looked like:
I slammed on the brakes as I screamed as though Freddy Krueger was in the backseat…luckily no one was on the freeway. I made my way to the shoulder shaking like a cold supermodel (I would assume supermodels are always cold since they have no fat for insulation) and pulled over. I promptly called my mother and scared the crap out of her, and then I called Tim and had him and his sister pick me up.
The car was still drivable once the hood was pried off the windshield, but there was no way in hell I was driving home…I called into work with the excellent excuse that I was in a car wreck and they gave me the day off. I drove that car for almost a year with the hood in the backseat and engine exposed. To say the least I turned heads in that car!
No cats were harmed in the making of this post, just a 1993 Geo Metro.
