My first car was a beauty, shiny, red, and new. Of course, by the time my parents gave her to me seven years later, she was only red, and a different shade of red at that. She'd taken my mail-carrier mother through seven years of wind, hail, sleet, snow, and great big dogs, and she showed it. But I loved her.
A 1991 Toyota Corolla station-wagon with over 170,000 miles on her, I called her the Patty-Wagon after the fact that I'd just played Peppermint Patty in the school rendition of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown." She was reliable, she was all mine, and she had loads of character, and you should all know how much I like my inanimate objects to have character.
She had a million scratches on her, two dents, one of which in the side which prevented the back door from opening properly, and a bumper sticker that said "If you've got a mailbox, we'll find it." She wouldn't accelerate over 45mph on a hill, and at stoplights, she shook like an earthquake. We used to say that Patty had Parkinson's. All these little flaws she picked up in those seven years of mail routes only gave her more character, only made her Patty. They also made it really easy for me to find her in parking lots.
I tried to explain this once to a guy who asked me when I was ever going to get that dent in the side fixed. I knew the answer was never, so I told him that it gave the car character. He laughed, and said, "Oh, and that dent in the back, it gives it integrity?"
Some people just don't understand.
By the time I graduated high school, Patty was proving to be less reliable than before. So we sold her, and I became one of those spoiled kids whose parents buy her a brand new car. For the record, they got a $1000 rebate and the only extra frill I asked for was a CD player. I got a new Corolla, this time a little sedan, with no dents and scratches, four working doors, and that still remains one of the quietest, calmest cars at a stoplight I've ever ridden in. Of course, I had a rotten time finding her in a parking lot, because everybody seems to have a Corolla nowadays.
Shiny and new, but with no character. I couldn't even really name her because she had no personality. I missed Patty and her dents, but I got over it once I realized that I could now pass other cars going uphill and that I no longer had to bring along that ridiculous adapter and CD player ensemble everywhere I went. Character is sentimental, but technology is a lot of fun.
The new car picked up a few scratches here and there. I'm not a very cautious person with my car. I was more cautious than I was with Patty; I no longer got shopping carts out of parking spaces by slowly pushing them with the car. But a few scratches weren't that bad, and they were mostly on the fenders. I still wished a little bit for some real character.
Last night, driving up a long, dark highway, some character flew right out of the sky and landed on my car. Rather, it ran out of the woods and across the road into my fender, before flipping over the car, landing on the ground, and then limping into the bushes. Stupid deer. I stopped, the car behind me stopped, and we all verified that I was okay, the car was okay, and the deer lost the fight. Then I drove on home, seeing two more deer grazing on the side of the road and freaking out each time. Those deer apparently knew not to attack cars.
This morning, in the clear, remorseless light of day, I have decided that maybe I've been overrating character. The dent is small. The headlight and mirror will need to be replaced, but the dent is not such that it impairs the car. It could have been a lot worse. I've heard some awful horror stories about hitting deer, and I thought of some worse ones on my drive last night (particularly when I passed the moose lodge). So my car got off pretty easy. But I secretly hope that the dent will be fixed, that my new car's character (which still has deer hair sticking to it) will be removed. But I doubt it, because I'm cheap, my parents are cheap, and I forgot to get the deer's insurance information.
Besides, it'll be good for me to be one of those spoiled kids whose parents buy her a new car that she dents up three years later and then her parents don't fix it. It'll make me less proud. It'll make me a bigger person. You might even say that it would build character.
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