Hey, That’s MY Car!

Hey, That’s MY Car!

Although the Jeep was a decade old and the transmission so shot it gave me whiplash within the first 30 miles, you would’ve thought I’d just bagged the Powerball lottery. My previous ride — a $500 Beretta with $600 rims and tinted windows so black, they were practically illegal — had no CD player or radio because the previous owner had probably pawned it for drugs, then was incarcerated before he could do the same to the rims.

A few hundred miles after my parents’ Jeep became mine, I realized the faulty transmission wasn’t its only problem. Whenever I went to turn on the vehicle, it often wouldn’t start because the battery was dead. My poor friends became so used to my request for a jump that they often wouldn’t return my call but would just pull their car up to my Jeep and pop the hood.

Six months and four battery replacements later, I finally broken down and took my Jeep to the mechanic’s. Within five minutes, the problem was found: My Jeep had an electrical leak that could be fixed for $300, or I could simply unhook the battery every time I went somewhere.

Because of the faulty transmission that now had me going 35 mph on the interstate (all those hand gestures from passing cars really hurt my and Betsy’s feelings), I didn’t think it wise to fix one part when another was surely going to fall off five miles or a speed bump later.

Well, I was wrong. It’s now three years later, and the black Jeep’s still ticking. Sometimes I wish I could just euthanize the thing, but then Betsy and I’ve been through quite a lot together, and each time I go to drive her over a cliff (when I’m not behind the wheel, of course), I remember how she’d so doggedly plodded down to see my fiancé time and time again; how she had commuted from Cookeville to Nashville while my best friend was in the hospital; how she’d never left me set–only threatened to until I threatened to have her taken to the junkyard and crushed to the size of a toaster oven.

Although my Jeep and I have an understanding, my friends and family don’t understand my decision to drive Betsy until her wheels rot off (which actually shouldn’t be too long from now). If we’re going somewhere and I offer to drive, there’s always fear in their eyes as they whisper, “The white Jeep or the black Jeep?” You see, just like that white dog and black dog represent good and evil, the same can be said for my husband’s white Jeep and my black one.

A few months ago I attended an author gathering in Nashville where I realized just how “evil” both the white Jeep and the black Jeep have become. Once the evening had ended, I retrieved my white Jeep parked in a garage beneath a swanky hotel, then pulled up to the exit to pay the man at the booth. Since my husband and I’ve been building a house for the past decade (okay, the past year), the Jeep’s been used like a work truck and dirt poured out of the vehicle and poofed around my heels as I stepped out of it, passed the man some cash and said, “Sorry. The window doesn’t work.”

The older man leaned over the booth and looked out at the white Jeep through his smiling dark eyes.

“No need to feel sarry,” he said. “That’s your car.” He pointed to the jalopy, then pointed at me. “That’s your car….No need to feel sarry.”

I nodded and smiled, then got back into the Jeep. In my rearview mirror I watched the man collect money from another driver and thought to myself, If he wants to see a car to feel sorry about, he should see my other one.