I’ve been thinking about my first car recently. Not the Chevy Grand Prix which I crashed into a drunk driver, which resulted in his arrest even though it was 100% my fault. He was drunk and I was not so I win. Yay! No, that was my mother’s car. I am talking about my 1972 puke green Plymouth Fury.

This was a car. Actually, it was probably about two cars. It could fit six comfortably across the back seat. This would have made it an excellent make out car, except that any time you were in it with the windows rolled up, you were risking asphyxiation. Unlike Michael Hutchinson, I was never much into that.

I mean, this was a car. It was so huge that I always figured if I got into an accident in it, it would take so long for the impact to reach me that I would be able to open the door and walk out of the car.

THIS was a car. It had grills over the headlights that flipped up when you turned on the lights. I don’t mean in a cool way. I mean in a way that made an enormous clunking sound. Whenever I wanted to start somebody on the street, all I had to do was pop those things up and down once and they’d think a piece of my Fury was flying at them.

This was a CAR. I named it Christine, because Stephen King’s Christine was a Plymouth Fury, albeit a much cooler earlier model. I had a friend named Christine, who was nicknamed Rusty. We used to say “what do Christine the car and Christine the person have in common? They are both rusty.” COMEDY FUCKING GOLD. Well, when I was 16.

This. Was. A. Car. It had no air conditioning, no climate control, no fan. You could either have the windows rolled down to cool off or heat up the car, or you could die a long slow death by oxygen deprivation. The engine only had about three moving parts. A syphilitic otter could repair it. Indeed, I believe my mechanic was a syphlitic otter - or at least thought he was. You know, because of the syphillus.

Did I mention that this was a car? Part of the car were so rotted out that my dad replaced them with sheet metal. No, sheet metal. All it would have taken was a can opener and I could have torn the fenders off. Once, when I had to change a tire, I made the mistake of trying to jack it up on a piece of sheet metal and tore a strip of metal off. A strip of metal shaped like a ribbon - perfectly rectangular. Awesome.

Damn, I miss that car. Or any car, really.