I miss cars.

Let me tell you why we are better then you. We don't have a car. No Car. Nothing. We do not have a car payment. We do not pay for gas. (Not even the 'good ol' days gas' that cost
$1.12 a gallon.) We do not pay for insurace, and the two accidents my wife got in the year we lived in Lindon are moving their way off her record without any hope of new ones. Life without a car is sweet, if you can get it. Most of you can't. (Save Justin and Sarah, you know.)

Most of the time we are real proud of the fact. Sure, it puts you tramping through the most unforgiving winters the heavens can muster, and sure, you have to develop deep and meaningful relationships based purely on the other couple's ability to take you to Ikea (sorry Balsers, but you knew). But for all that we loose, we gain, and then some. Except...

This is probably my favorite car I've ever had, and I have loved the cars I've had. (Incidentally this is not the actual car but mine looked just like it... I don't know who is in this car.) This beast got, like, 4 miles to the gallon and cost 35 bucks to fill up and I was filling up in the year 2000, so that was a lot. But I loved it and it was mine.

My Father also loves cars. In my adolescence he was driving this...

He was up at 6:30 in the morning washing this car in the garage in the dead of winter. I loved this car. In this car was the first (and only) accident I ever got in...with another car. (I've hit curbs and garbage cans causing major damage to my vehicles but only once had an accident with another car.) Some very very old man coming out of Sears on Freedom Blvd. ran in to me and Jenny Lloyd and Allison Lowery (whom we had illegally stuffed into the back where there was no seat). That was a bad day. My father (who is perfect) said that it could have happened to anyone, I just happened to be the one driving at the time. (He was right, by the way; that very very old man was nothing less then a hazard on the roads at night.)

And so, for my 17th Birthday, despite monumental financial stress, my Dad got me this car...

only mine had a black bra, and so because it looked like a space shuttle I name him Rocket, my first car. It was not a fancy car; point of fact, it had zero interior upholstery, so when you rolled down the windows you could see the glass moving into the frame of the door. Also, the driver's seat would unexpectedly recline on its own, so we stuck a broom that reached from the back of the car and stuck pointedly into the drivers back making it feel like the driver was a spoiled princess sleeping on a mattress covered pea (and by pea I mean sharp stick. It never occurred to us at the time, but had I been rear ended I most certainly would have been kabobbed by this broom). This was aided in the fact that the car had no back seat, which aided the fact that the battery, located where the back seat should be, often came unattached or, in some extreme cases, caught fire. Either way, I had to pull over and operate. Despite its heavy smell of petrol, I loved this car. I remember driving to school that January 9th, 1996 and Joanie Pead was disgusted that I got anything I wanted--which we all know, just under true and everlasting love, envy is the most desired emotion by the high school student. Thanks, Dad.

I have had other less cool cars... Lindsay once wrecked this...
(My most boring but dependable car (after the Wagoneer I wanted a car that would start every time you turned the key).) And so we went across the street and traded the wrecked car in for these two cars...

How do you get two cars for one busted up car? You just can alright, don't judge us. And I did love those cars too. (Except I made Lindsay drive the Hyundai cause, come on! I feakin' loved that Cruiser. And don't worry, it's still in the family.)

And so, when you're filling up your Civics for what it used to cost to fill up my Wagoneer, and your thoughts remain steeped in envy for those of us who pay $2 to ride the subway to anywhere we need to get, remember that four-wheeled friend is part of your family and he's all yours, and no homeless man has ever relieved himself in the back corner of your car (to your knowledge). You never have to wait for you car to show up just to take you to six wrong places on the way to the one right one. He keeps your kids safe when you have to run in for a quick second on that hot summer day. And mostly, the hole in your heart is filled, even if disappointedly, whereas the holes in my heart remain on E.

And that is why You are better then Us.

~P