notes |
profile
mail |
host | older I random entry
April 28, 2003 // 5:49 p.m. // A "new"car
My car is in worse shape than ever. Seeing much this first hand, my mom sent my dad, sister and I out to a car auction to search for a potential car. I had no intention of buying a car. Because of this, I told my dad not to bother registering. Before I knew it, the exact car I had been eyeing in the days prior to the auction made its way in (it was the fourth car auctioned) and we could have picked it up for a low price. He immediately registered to avoid any of this from happening again. I glanced down the list of vehicles and saw a few cars I may consider buying. He had also found a car he liked and as he re-entered the small garaged room he smiled like a boy on Christmas and told us that he was going to bid on a car. My sister and I gave each other a look that you'd have to see to describe. The car he wanted to bid on was coming up soon. He bid. He won. He paid his $350. My sister and I were embarrassed and hid our faces in the same fashion that the mother from A Christmas Story did when the leg lamp arrived and was lit for the first time. Meanwhile, my dad was grinning from ear to ear. The first comment from my sister after we bought it: "I'm glad we took my car (an automatic) because if we had brought dad's Wrangler (a manual) we'd have to drive that thing home." Truer words were never spoken. I'm wondering if he remembers that we've had two of these vehicles catch fire as we were driving them in our history of owning cars, including one "traumatic" experience that occurred in the exact same model and type of vehicle while my dad was driving west on the freeway less than a week after we bought the car. When I say "caught fire" I don't mean a small little engine fire that we put out but ruined the car. I mean "caught fire" as in get-the-hell-out-of-the-car-because-the-thing-is-fully-engulfed-in-flames. The already ancient car/van/bus burned to the ground on the side of the road that day. I'm trying to find the digital camera to put pictures up. Until then, I'm keeping you in suspense as to what this death trap is. We're trying to get him to park it in the backyard or at the neighbors because my mom, sister and I won't own up to it being ours. And when my mom doesn't like a car, (when we brought her outside to show her, her reaction to the vehicle and my dad's huge smile for having bought it was simply a disbelieving, "oh no.") you know it's bad.