My youngest is starting her Junior year of college this fall. This is her first year not living on campus so it is also the first time she will need a car to commute to and from classes. With four drivers in the family who need vehicles and only three cars available, we had a small problem.
My wife needs her car to get to work and I need my truck to get groceries, shop, and run other errands throughout the week. We asked EM1 if she would be willing to share a car, but she acted as if we had suggested renting out her room to a group of traveling carnival clowns. She immediately began complaining that she had her mirrors exactly where she wanted them, her radio stations programmed to her favorite channels, and she didn’t want her sister messing everything up.
Rather than reminding her that the car isn’t hers and she doesn’t even pay for the gas she uses, I decided I didn’t have the energy to devote to that particular argument when there are so many better things to yell at her about. So, I let it go.
I suggested that we look for a cheap, but reliable, used car that EM2 could drive to and from school.
My wife had other ideas. She saw an opportunity to get herself a new car and then let EM2 drive her old one. My wife argued that her old Subaru was safe, reliable, and well maintained. We knew it had never been in an accident and that we had taken very good care of it while we had it, so it was an ideal vehicle to give to our daughter.
I agreed to the plan. When we told EM2 that she would be driving her mom’s car, she shrugged and said, “I don’t really like the Subaru. Can we look for something else?”
I have terrible children. And I have only myself to blame for that. It’s my fault they were born and it’s my fault I continued to feed them until they were big enough to start developing opinions about stuff.
We were offering her a four year-old car with a sun roof, fully functioning heat and A/C, stereo/CD player, electric everything, and more safety features than the first rocket that NASA landed on the moon, and she wanted something else.
My first car was a twenty-year-old Volkswagon beetle that my dad bought from a friend of his for $350. Even back in 1983, three hundred and fifty dollars was a ridiculously cheap vehicle, and I think he might have overpaid. The car was basically four wheels and a windshield. And the windshield was cracked.
There was no air conditioning. The only heat available was a small lever on the floorboards that would open a vent between the engine compartment and the cab. Air would flow over the engine, warm up marginally from the heat of the carburetor, then move into the driver’s compartment along with a significant amount of exhaust.
On cold days I would play a little game with myself while driving on the roadway. I would try to roll the window down right before I passed out from carbon monoxide poisoning, then roll it back up before freezing to death. If nothing else, being constantly on the precipice of death at least kept me from getting bored on long drives with no one else in the car.
In addition to the lack of environmental controls, it only had a six-volt battery running the electrical system. It was enough to start the car (most of the time) but it wasn’t enough for anything else. Not even a radio. Being a typical teenager in the 80’s, there was no way I couldn’t have music in my car. I eventually bought another battery, stuck it in the trunk, and wired up a portable stereo system with a state of the art, 8-track tape player.
Okay it wasn’t state of the art. It was my brother’s piece of crap player that he let me have when he upgraded to a cassette player. But it worked, and that was all I cared about.
It wasn’t until years later that I learned that carrying around a 6-volt battery in the trunk of a car attached to loose stereo wiring was an incredible fire hazard. Even if I had known, I probably would have done it anyway. After all the carbon monoxide I had been breathing, I wasn’t making good choices at that time in my life.
My point to all this is that I was grateful for what I had. I was grateful for the crappy car, the questionable heat source, and the hand-me-down 8-track tape player. I didn’t ask my dad, “Can we look for something else?”
If I had, he probably would have sold the car back to his buddy, handed me 20 bucks, and told me to go invest in a bus pass.
Now I have kids that feel entitled to turn up their noses at a car that is better and more luxurious than anything I could have ever imagined while growing up, and like I said before, it is totally my fault. I have never instilled in them a sense of appreciation for just having basic necessities.
But maybe it isn’t too late. Maybe I can start now with a more practical car for EM2.
Does anybody know what I can get for $350 these days?
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