Intrepid, how I'll miss you.

It seems nothing to be sad over, getting a new car. But when I pulled out of the driveway in my new Impala and I saw the Intrepid still sitting there, with its faded paint and its hole in the bumper, and that little bit of rust starting to form on the trunk--I teared up. The Intrepid. The era of the Intrepid is over.

I keep chunking my life this way--into eras. Together they don't make sense, because they don't align. The era of school, the era of a car, the era of Dingleberry, the era of forensics, the era of thinking clearly after high school, the era of Tony Sims, the era of teaching. The era of the Intrepid was defined by late undergrad, then grad school, then a rough year of no school, and then grad school again. Most of my 20s were in that car. This year I've called, or considered, adulthood. I have a salary, and I pay into a retirement fund, and consistently, money is put into my checking account. I've decided that the reason I'm getting along so well with my family, that I've left so much of my angst and anger behind is because I'm an adult and that's what adults do--even though this wasn't a conscious decision. I pay bills, put stamps on them, I make coffee in the morning and I bring it to work. This is all new for me. And it makes it harder, but appropriate, I guess to let the Intrepid go. Most kids in the high school parking lot had better looking cars than I did, and my dad was saying things like you break down on the way to Green Bay with that car, we're leaving it there. But, sigh. What a good car. It was good to me. It was my first major purchase, that car, and for six years I watched it age. And now I just let it go. I just left it there and came back home without it.

So, I'll miss: the message center with its orange light telling me, again, it was time to add washer fluid; the excitement I had when I first got it, driving back to Winona, how I said nice Intrepid to everyone who had the same car as me; the excitment I had because I'd gotten rid of the Spirit and all those times I spent jumping it with Jessica's Cavalier; the long trips by myself to St. Louis, listening to Sinatra for about six hours straight on the way home, crying, missing Ryan; the drive down Huff street with Jessica in the passenger seat, rolling down her window and locking it while blasting "MMMBop" from the speakers while she attempted to duck her head; the drive down to St. Louis to live there for the summer, the summer in St. Louis, driving around St. Charles, the drive to Mankato from there to meet Reedo and find a place to live; that green star sticker from Southwood Terrace that I still have in the corner window; all the drives to the cities during that first year in Mankato up to Tony Sims, coming out to that car after the late nights at the bar, listening to the TSB CD with Shannon on our drive back home to sleep, so wonderfully and drunkenly on the warm bed, head next to the heater; then the drives back listening to the TSB CD; the times through drive thru, bacon egg and cheese biscuits; the speeding tickets, even; using the big seats to haul furniture--from Winona to St. Louis, from St. Louis to the first Mankato apartment, from the first apartment to Highland, from Highland to St. Louis Park, from St. Louis Park to Minneapolis, from Minneapolis to Rochester, from Rochester to Albertville, from Albertville to Hutchinson; the trips to the twine ball, to Bockfest, to Holidazzle; the free tires I got out of that accident in Mankato; the $800 I got from the hail damage in Rochester; so many times I put gas in; the whale noise when the power steering fluid was low; the oil checks, water checks, oil changes, engine tune-ups from dad; the card I sent him the 2nd summer I owned the car that said that the oil changes were his way of saying he loved me even though he doesn't ever say so; the jobs I drove to: Videoland, the shoe factory, MSU, the group home, Pier 1, Thomson, Graywolf, Barnes & Noble, Capella (if I didn't take the bus), Century HS, tutoring in Rochester, Hutchinson HS; the tire changes; the time Ben helped me push it in the driveway in Mankato; the parking tickets in the driveway; the time we went in the ditch last year; the time in the Century parking lot when it wouldn't start; the time I packed up all my teaching office from Century; the pole I ran into last February that didn't even damage the front of the car; the month it spent outside Jenny's house, how I neglected yet loved her; the two plate numbers, how I got a parking ticket at RCTC right before the change and never paid it because the school wouldn't identify me; the passengers in the car, the people I drove around; the fact that where that car was was where I was, and if people wanted to know where I was, they just had to look for the purple Intrepid.