Auntie's Dodge
I hadn't broadsided just any bus
When I was sixteen years old, I saved up all my pennies from my summer job and bought my first car: an immaculate 1986 Dodge 600 convertible, the color of a freshly squeezed turd. Although it was another full year before I could be arsed to gain my driver's license, I immediately got to work plastering the rear bumper with obnoxious stickers and obtaining a pair of pink fuzzy dice to hang from the rearview mirror. After school and on weekends I would take the keys and sit in the driveway for hours, raising and lowering the canvas top, lovingly dusting the dashboard and dreaming of the day when I would finally be tearing ass down the road and throwing all manner of what-have-you at pedestrians from the exposed leather bucket driver's seat of my fancy yet bitchin' ride.
A year passed and I was presented with my shiny new driver's license. Nights were spent zooming around town with a plethora of new friends who popped out of the woodwork at the mention of WOW A CAR AND A CONVERTIBLE AT THAT! I began to drive myself and a cramped carful of said friends to school each morning. It was every feeble-minded small-town teenager's wet dream.
One fateful and foggy morning on the way to school, it was decided that we should make a detour to a gas station so everyone could (illegally) purchase cigarettes and waste their lunch money/allowance on Slim Jims and Mountain Dew. The gas station was situated on the town's only busy corner, and as rush hour traffic had just begun to pick up, it seemed that I would never be able to make the left turn to head toward the school. BUT WHAT IS THIS? A friendly stranger gestures for me to pull in front of him! With a smile on my lips and a song in my heart, I waved a thank-you and swung my precious car out into the street...
Right into a fucking bus.
With the yelp of metal on metal followed by a deafening SMACK, the passenger-door window imploded all over The Girl Named Jeff, who had called shotgun that day. Her only response was to bellow "DUDE, BUS." I shakily pulled over into a parking lot, where I would discover yet another horror.
I hadn't broadsided just any bus. It was a SCHOOL BUS. From MY SCHOOL.
As I checked all my passengers to make sure no one was hurt, forty pasty, fat and acne-riddled adolescent faces pressed up against the windows of the bus and stared down at the ruins of my little car. Faces that would approach me for the next few weeks and say things like "HEY MAN THAT DEAL WITH THE BUS WAS WICKED" or "WAY TO GO, CRASH" or "JESUS, YOU'RE STUPID."
The door had to be replaced and my insurance rates skyrocketed. After another six months of driving the valiant little Dodge, it became apparent that the frame was bent beyond repair because, much like AC/DC, it SHOOK ME ALL NIGHT LONG whenever I reached speeds in excess of 30 miles per hour. I wound up selling it to a mechanic for $300 and buying a ridiculously overpriced and "gently used" ultra-wanky Pontiac Sunfire (Yuppiecar) which I have come to hate with every fiber of my being. (No sunroof? No spoiler? NO TAPE DECK FOR CHRISSAKES WHAT IS THIS SHIT?)
Damn it. I still dream about that convertible at night.
A year passed and I was presented with my shiny new driver's license. Nights were spent zooming around town with a plethora of new friends who popped out of the woodwork at the mention of WOW A CAR AND A CONVERTIBLE AT THAT! I began to drive myself and a cramped carful of said friends to school each morning. It was every feeble-minded small-town teenager's wet dream.
One fateful and foggy morning on the way to school, it was decided that we should make a detour to a gas station so everyone could (illegally) purchase cigarettes and waste their lunch money/allowance on Slim Jims and Mountain Dew. The gas station was situated on the town's only busy corner, and as rush hour traffic had just begun to pick up, it seemed that I would never be able to make the left turn to head toward the school. BUT WHAT IS THIS? A friendly stranger gestures for me to pull in front of him! With a smile on my lips and a song in my heart, I waved a thank-you and swung my precious car out into the street...
Right into a fucking bus.
With the yelp of metal on metal followed by a deafening SMACK, the passenger-door window imploded all over The Girl Named Jeff, who had called shotgun that day. Her only response was to bellow "DUDE, BUS." I shakily pulled over into a parking lot, where I would discover yet another horror.
I hadn't broadsided just any bus. It was a SCHOOL BUS. From MY SCHOOL.
As I checked all my passengers to make sure no one was hurt, forty pasty, fat and acne-riddled adolescent faces pressed up against the windows of the bus and stared down at the ruins of my little car. Faces that would approach me for the next few weeks and say things like "HEY MAN THAT DEAL WITH THE BUS WAS WICKED" or "WAY TO GO, CRASH" or "JESUS, YOU'RE STUPID."
The door had to be replaced and my insurance rates skyrocketed. After another six months of driving the valiant little Dodge, it became apparent that the frame was bent beyond repair because, much like AC/DC, it SHOOK ME ALL NIGHT LONG whenever I reached speeds in excess of 30 miles per hour. I wound up selling it to a mechanic for $300 and buying a ridiculously overpriced and "gently used" ultra-wanky Pontiac Sunfire (Yuppiecar) which I have come to hate with every fiber of my being. (No sunroof? No spoiler? NO TAPE DECK FOR CHRISSAKES WHAT IS THIS SHIT?)
Damn it. I still dream about that convertible at night.