My First Car......

My first car was a Datsun B210. If you are too young to remember that Datsun is what a Nissan was called before it was a Nissan, please shut up.

I actually had a couple of used cars bought/borrowed from family members before I got the car just like the one above, but I don't count them.

I count the B210 as my first car.

My step-father had died, Frogger Blogger (who wasn't collecting frogs at that time and the world had never heard of blogging) needed a new car, my mother needed a new car, and I needed a car period. We traded in two gigantic cruise-ship looking Buicks on three Datsun B210s.

I picked out a little red 5-speed sporty-looking one, and Mom and Frogger picked out identical blue ones. When they brought them home, however, Mom had decided the red sporty one had "too much power" for me, so I got one of the blue ones. AND IT WAS ONLY A 4-SPEED.

I pouted for days.

Until Frogger's ex-husband pointed out that I was being a brat and I should be eternally grateful that I was getting a car at all, much less a brand new one, and all I was doing was proving what everyone had long suspected, that as the baby I was spoiled rotten.

I hated him almost at that moment as I did when he beat me to the point of vomiting when I was about eight years old. Looking back now, I can clearly see that he was right. About me being a brat, but not about the beating. I've never come to terms with that incident.

Anyway, the blue car was mine. I didn't know how to drive a stick shift, but Mom suggested I learn. It was amazing how quickly I DID learn, since I really, really wanted to drive my new car.

It had no radio and no air conditioner. And I loved it.

I got it over Christmas break my senior year of high school (but I don't remember it being my Christmas present, further proving I was ridiculously spoiled), and on the first day back at school, I drove past the gym on my way out of school for the day. A group of guys in my senior class were standing around the gym entrance, and one of them yelled, "[Bragger's] got a new car! Let's go!" Whereupon six guys (plus me) piled in my car for a joy ride around the neighborhood. There wasn't room for six guys in that little car. The engine strained going up a hill. I was wishing I had the "power" of the sporty red machine I had originally picked out.

[In a crystal-clear case of karma, the red car that my mother insisted on wresting from my greedy little grasp had to have its engine rebuilt within its first year of life. Bam.]

I had a radio (with cassette player!) installed the next spring, and my friend Chi-Chi and I rode many miles listening to the Beach Boys, Billy Joel, David Allan Coe, and some artists even worse than that last one.

Jason was driving that car when we were tooling around Athens one day. I had my seat reclined, the windows were down (remember, no air conditioner), and I suddenly blurted out that I needed to pee. People in nearby cars turned to stare at Jason, trying to figure out how he made his voice sound like that. Jason dragged on my arm, hissing "Sit up. SIT UP!" so people would stop looking at him. 

I was still driving that car after I married Sweet Girl's father. We lost it in a tragic accident in the parking lot of a grocery store one Sunday morning. Would you have believed a car could be totaled in a grocery store parking lot? Somewhere I have a picture of the wreckage; I'll see if I can find it.

That car was nothing special, but I think it's like your first love. You always remember your first car, the one you first felt car lust for.

It cost less BRAND NEW than the bicycle I bought a year ago.