Today I took my car’s title to the mechanic, since he offered to buy her from me for a few hundred dollars. Since she’s twenty years old and has gone through a lot, she really wasn’t worth anything, and I’d planned to have her towed to a junk yard and donated to charity.
But he said – other than needing a new transmission – her insides looked pretty good and he wanted to fix her up to get back to working condition for his own family’s personal use. Fine with me – I’m happy that someone will continue to love her instead of thinking about her being chopped up into parts.
So I brought the title to him today, and realized that I put over 133,000 miles on her, since I’d forgotten the original odometer reading. She decided to need (another) new transmission at 195,000 miles. She’s had a good life, now it’s time for peaceful retirement.
My visit to the mechanic didn’t take as long as I thought, so in an effort to kill time and celebrate selling the first-ever big thing I owned as an adult, I stopped at the convenience store by work to get a drink. I’d been hoping for a brand of tea I’ve recently fallen in love with, but they didn’t have it, so I decided to get my old standby, my beloved Cherry Coke.
When I walked to the case, this is what greeted me:
All the other bottles had the regular Coke label facing out – this is the only one that had a name.
The name I gave my car when I first got her, the car I’ve driven over a decade and had been my loyal companion through apartment/job/relationship changes?
Veronica.
Maybe it’s silly to have such an emotional attachment to a hunk of steel and rubber, but I can’t help thinking this was a little way that the universe was letting me know that my car enjoyed her time with me, too.
So maybe I won’t ever drive her again, but I will “share a Coke” with her one last time.
The Obsessive Dilettante 