My Birthday Surprise Part I

I'm doing this in parts because it sparked a whole essay. I have more to write about this, but I want to get that main story out there, the story that basically declares my husband as the most thoughtful husband ever. And sneaky. Sneaky, sneaky bastard.

Part I:

I paid cash for my first car. A 1973 Super Beetle with a ’72 engine. I was in high school and a self-proclaimed hippie. It was the last time in my life that I was a size small enough to purchase clothes at Abercrombie…but I didn’t. I chose baggy t-shirts proclaiming “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” and Salvation Army pants. Indeed, I owned a pair of camos and wore them on a regular basis. I sewed peacock fabric into the seams of my jeans. I wore platforms and Airwalks. I probably smelled bad. I revolted against consumerism, conforming, and “The Man.” This car seemed to embody everything I was and wanted to be.

It wasn’t a fantastic car by any means. I talked the guy down to $900. He had wanted a grand. If I had known anything about cars at the time, I would have walked away from this one. I learned years later it had been in several accidents, had most of its parts Bond-Oed together. “N-rigged,” my brother-in-law called it.

At the time I bought it, I didn’t know how to drive a stick shift. I had my dad drive it home for me. I figured I’d learn later, in the church parking lot a block from our house. I’d drive around in circles until I mastered the difference between first and third gear.

This was the car I drove to Kaplan’s Woods after school, where us hoodlums hung out and smoked and played sepia and ate Taco Johns because one of the guys knew someone who worked there and we could get it cheap. Couples would hold hands and walk into the woods and come back with red faces and tangled hair. This was the car I drove to Happy Chef after dinner, where we made ourselves comfortable in Booth 10 while Colleen kept refilling our coffees. This was the car I drove to my boyfriend’s house ten miles out in the country, two of them gravel roads. I didn't worry about dings or paint chips with this car.

Just before leaving for my freshman year of college my brother bought a new car, and I bought his sporty two-door, red Cavalier at a bargain price. I took the insurance off the bug, left it behind with my Nirvana posters and my peacock pants and my collection of stuffed bunnies. I had the best intentions of keeping it safely stored at my uncle's, but by second semester I was in dire need of a computer. I sold the bug for $800, enough to buy a rebuilt computer that would die a year later. It didn't take me long to know I had sold out, that I had become "The Man."

To be fair, I sold the car to my (future) brother-in-law. He had gone to school to rebuild cars, though he's spent the last ten years managing cell phone stores and meat packing plants. I planned to let him fix it up and then, when I had the money, offer him more than he could refuse to sell it back to me. I knew I would never want another bug, but I still wanted that one.

He took no time stripping it apart, taking off the paint. Then he let it sit in his garage, undrivable and nearly unrecognizable for the better part of the next three years. Then the boy told me his brother had sold it, still in pieces, to some guy. I was never even given the chance to get it back.

While this devasted me for some time, I had made my peace with the situation. I was never to see my car again. I sold it for a computer and in that moment turned into everything I never wanted to be when I was in high school, when I let a car define me.

It was quite the shock when that car showed up last Saturday in a garage filled with my parents and in-laws.

To be continued...