THIS IS US

In 1992, my dad went down to the garage where my grandfather was the shop manager and bought me a used vehicle that would eventually be known as “Loretta.” The photo above is not my truck, of course. Mine was black, not navy, and my tires were chunky off-roaders, not the half-bald minivan-esque shoes you see up there. But, most of it was the same, in all of its 1987 glory.

I know, I know. Your privilege alarm just went off, so let me address a few things before we get started. Though I grew up in a state that precisely no one would associate with the word “rural” (or even “green” for that matter), the town that I lived in when I was a teenager was of the one-horse, no-stop-light variety. There were so few human residents despite the booming population of pygmy goats that we did not have a school system. Therefore I had to travel 30 minutes to the closest high school. My parents both worked full-time jobs and there was no one to carpool with unless, like I said, there was a particularly intelligent piece of livestock in the neighborhood who had a penchant for trigonometry. In order to not break their own stones, my parents bought me a car that proudly parked itself on the line between harmless and hoopty.

Oh, how I loved Loretta.

Although my 16-year-old self had to get up at the crack of dawn to be able to get to school on time, I barely complained. And who would? When I drove down the long, dirt driveway at 6:45 a.m. every day, my fingers were already fumbling along the buttons of the tape deck to crank up whatever grunge band du jour was going to be my morning anthem. By the time I took the left turn onto Route 3, I was already pulling a Marlboro Light out of the pack that I stashed in the armrest compartment and unearthing one of at least seven lighters I had floating around in the car. I would hit the highway buzzing from nicotine, singing along with Eddie or Layne, and feeling free as a goddamned falcon.

And this is really as good as it gets, isn’t it? I didn’t know it then because I thought everything good in life was going to start on the other side of 18. I never would have believed that right there on a Tuesday morning in November of 1992 I was living my best life while heading to class with a backpack full of homework on the passenger seat and a duffel bag full of soccer cleats in the trunk.

I never would have believed that there would come a time when I would miss the simplicity of driving while singing along to the radio and wondering what the cute boy might say to me. I literally had nothing else to do. Now, I can’t back out of the driveway without 23 notification pings on my phone, the BEEP BEEP BEEP from the backup sensor, and four tries to get the Bluetooth to connect.

With its 2.5 liter, 4-cylinder engine, Loretta was so underpowered that she would shake on the highway going over 65 mph — no doubt a selling point for my dad. The center console was filled with cigs and mixtapes, the glove box was packed with tampons and fast-food packets of hot sauce, and there were at least four empty cans of Diet Coke rattling around under the seats at any given time. I’m pretty sure that I had at least three days of clothing changes in various locations and probably enough lipstick options to run a pageant. My biggest worry back then was if I was going to run out of gas soon and whether my outfit was in dress code. Sure, there was plenty of angst, but in my little truck with the jaunty wood panels and the colorful stickers along the back window from all of the ski spots in New Hampshire, I was A-OK.

Our first car is, without question, the one we love the most. Some of us worked hard to be able to afford it, doing things like scraping paint off houses in summer heat or slinging burgers till our hair smelled like a fryolator. Some of us didn’t have to do anything but live in the wrong town — like me. But all of us had the rosiest of rose-colored glasses for our first set of wheels, no matter how ugly, broken, or bust-out. We used them for transportation, recon, napping, studying, storage, and so, so much making out. If my car’s interior could talk, it would say, “Damn girl, don’t your lips get chapped?”

The answer, of course, was “Not yet.”

We love our first cars because there is perhaps no other investment that has such a dramatic effect on our everyday life. We suddenly become overwhelmed with possibilities now that we have an engine under our butts. The Jeep took me to school, to a better job at a fancier restaurant that was farther away, and to every concert I could get tickets to. It got me through winters when I had to click on the 4x4 and summers when the air conditioning never failed to cool off the top of me while the backs of my thighs still stuck to the leather seat.

Loretta was freedom and independence, yes, but also responsibility. I felt like an adult commuting every day, keeping an eye out for the lowest gas prices and when I’d need an oil change. If you ask me when I’ve ever felt like a complete badass, I will tell you that it’s when I was a 17-year-old girl parked in a gas station to open her own damned hood and replace her own damned windshield washer fluid. I’ve run ultramarathons that didn’t make me feel as cool.

We love our first cars because they are rolling scrapbooks filled with memories. I usually recoil at the idea of nostalgia, typically believing that it’s the highlight reel of our past and not at all accurate. However, Loretta gets a pass. I made friends in that car, went on dates, broke up with boyfriends, practiced for job interviews, and once when a cyst burst on my ovary, Loretta served as an examining room for the EMTs. She drove me up north to ski and down south to visit colleges. She got full of salt from the roads, sand from the beach, and even absorbed a beer spill or two. Not mine, of course.

Sometimes, I would purposely choose to wash the car by hand in the driveway because I knew my dad would wander out from the garage with a spray bottle of Armor All in one hand and a rag in the other. I loved when he showed me how to tell if my tires needed replacing or what a bottle of STP gas additive would do for Loretta’s horsepower. I didn’t even mind the sharp smell of his cigar as long as he made the time to show me how to read a dipstick.

One of the worst days of my life was when an old lady blew a stop sign and slammed into me while I was leaving soccer practice. I cried, not because I was scared, but because I felt bad for Loretta. I hadn’t had much experience with accidents and couldn’t get my brain around the idea that the crunched-up metal and broken glass would be magically smoothed and restored back to its former glory. She came back to me but was never the same. The car had acquired several new shimmies and a THUNK sound when I put her in reverse. I eventually had to trade her in for a completely depressing and mediocre Honda Accord — as one does. Truth be told, I have never felt the same about another car. I am not sure that I ever will.

If you enjoyed this article and would like unlimited access to read work by all of the brilliant writers here on Medium, click here.