First Car

When I was seventeen, my dad gave me a car.

You’d think I’d have been delighted, right? But I was mortified and horrified. I couldn’t bear to be seen driving a car. And this one…

I didn’t say anything, you know. I just nodded and looked at the car, back at the keys in my hand, at the car. Did I want to take it for a spin? Oh… no, no. Maybe next time.

Oh, the look on his face. Imagine buying your daughter her first car and having her act like you’ve handed her some bedroom slippers that don’t quite fit. My poor dad. And he couldn’t get anything out of me other than “Gee.” And the looking at the keys and the car and the keys. As though I was trying to figure out how I could hide this thing, so nobody would ever see it.

I was trying to figure out exactly that, actually.

So he took me back home to my mother, and she asked me what the hell was wrong because I was obviously some upset. And I told her. She called him and explained that one does not buy a car for a girl without asking her first.

He sold the car (for a profit, so I don’t feel too bad about that one) and then he waited a couple of weeks and asked me: what was I looking for in a car? Had the other one been too plain? Did I want something cuter?

I laughed, blown away that he knew me so little. Too plain? No. It had been too flashy. Red seats? Big fancy tinted windows? Could he not find something… small and grey? A mouse of a car. One that nobody would ever look twice at.

And… he did. He found exactly that in no time at all. Literally grey, and about as unassuming a car as ever rolled down a street. A little Datsun B210 hatchback. I drove that car for years and years. Despite my total lack of care for it – I changed the oil faithfully whenever the oil light came on – it never gave me any trouble to speak of.

They don’t make them like that anymore. Dammit.