A fond farewell to my outside reading room

A couple days ago, my sister Shawn emailed me & told me of a friend’s sister’s plight; the young woman’s jalopy had broken down on the interstate, was beyond repair and she was in desperate need of a new (used) car. 

Was I still interested in selling mine?  

Shawn asserted she was NOT trying to sway me one way or the other, she was only asking as I’d mentioned recently that I was thinking about selling my car.  Still, I replied “no, sorry” and she said okay.

Then I put on my Spock ears & decided to think about this logically.

I’ve owned this car for 16 years, ordered it direct from the Honda factory in the fall of 2002.  Even though I was 39 at the time, it was my first car; I’d been living in the city since the 80’s and got around pretty well without one.  But after my dad died in 2001, I told my mom I was going to get my license & a car so I could visit her regularly, without having to rely on others to bring me down from the city & back.   And that’s just what I did.

Y’know, I’ll never forget what my driving instructor said to me the day of my first lesson:  “It’s been my experience that older women who learn to drive make the best drivers but older men, just the opposite.  They never get comfortable with it.”   I asserted I’d be fine (and I wasn’t THAT old) and then began pumping the parking brake.  When she asked what I was doing, I said “priming the engine, isn’t this what you have to do before you take it out of park?”

ANYWAY—I hate to admit it, but that instructor was right; I was nervous everytime I got behind the wheel.   For the first year or so, I forced myself to drive it for simple errands, but I was just too used to walking to these places.  So the car was soon used exclusively for trips back home.  And then these last couple years… even that became increasingly frustrating.  (My vision isn’t what it used to be.)

So I’ve pretty much left it alone in it’s parking space, aside from going downstairs twice a week to run the engine for 30 minutes to remind the poor thing it wasn’t dead.  I always took a book along with me while it idled, and it became my outside reading room.   (Geez I’ve read a lot of good books in that car… I can’t believe I’m sharing this!)

So I emailed my sister again and said yes, I’ll sell it.   She said “Don’t do it unless you know it will make you happy!  And if you change your mind at the last minute, I’ll just tell her the deal’s off.  It will break the girl’s heart, but… it’s your car!”  I said that selling it wasn’t going to make me happy, I have great affection for my green bean.  But I’ve probably driven it 3 times this year, and it deserves a real driver.  

(Plus I’m paying $40-50 a month for parking & insurance!)

I talked briefly with the young woman who’s purchasing it (at a pretty fair price too, in the range of it’s Kelly Blue Book value) and she couldn’t have been nicer or more appreciative.  She assured me it’d be going places—in Atlanta, Georgia where she now lives.  Gulp… I guess I can forget about visitation rights.

Ah my little Civic Coupe.. I think you’re going to love your new owner.  Now I just have to find a new place to read.