I was 18 when I bought my first car with my own hard-earned cash.

I had just moved out of my parent’s house, and I was living in a ridiculously cheap apartment. I was working for the mouse, and I was making barely any money.

I found a little 1987 Hyundai Excel for sale on the street outside my apartment.

When I think of the ugly gray car I get shivers up my spine (the same way I feel when I think of Bill the Janitor at a school I used to work at). It was really tore up, and the previous owner had a laugh now/cry later sticker on the back window.

At the time, price was really important to me, and this car was going for $300.  Cash.

I showed up for a test drive and the car was a manual transmission.  I wasn’t going to let a little thing like a stick shift stand in my way of driving this beast, so I bought it any way…and grinded the gears all the way home.

I practiced driving that car in the neighborhood, and finally chanced driving it to work about a week after buying it.  I remember being embarrassed pulling into the parking lot (but significantly less embarrassed walking into the parking lot).

There was also an incident one spring evening where an unusually sudden rain sweeped across Garden Grove, and I had to run down and move the car (the passenger side window would frequently fall).  When I jumped in the car, I heard a hsssssss in the backseat.  When I turned around, I saw a cornered alley cat that had taken refuge in my hunk-of-junk.

The car lasted about 8 months; and the last month it sat un-drivable in my parking spot.

Even though it was a complete piece of shit, I can still fondly remember the great feeling of personal independence when I made that purchase…and then I stalled in an intersection two minutes later.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Simple Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.