College (the first time) was probably the most broke – unfazed by how broke I was, I have ever been or will ever be. As an adult being that broke, with a car payment, cell phone bill, electric bill so on and so forth it is much more stressful and completely unrewarding; cutting corners here and there chips away at the positive outlook I once possessed. This is not about that, this is about happy broke time…
My first car was a white 92’ Nissan Sentra. I bought it from my bestfriend’s family for $2500, with the help of my parents as I was 18 and actually had never seen that number in my bank account EVER, regardless of the fact that I worked at Blockbuster for over a year and a half at that point in time. Within a week I named him Rocco (pronounced Rock-Oh), mainly because I thought it was funny to give such a large name to such a small automobile, but he certainly lived up to it.
Rocco was broken into… this is the only photo I could find while at work.
I used to take Rocco up a treacherous dirt mountain in Tucson every other week or so, my friends and I were determined to get up to the top but we wouldn’t leave early enough to just hike it. Rocco never made it to the pinnacle, because once I got to a rock the size of my car I decided to bail out on the plan entirely.
Another time someone stole Rocco (mainly to show off, but I didn’t even know the guy), he jammed my car into drive, drove over a curb that veered up at a pretty sharp angle and popped out on the other side of another curb. That maneuver scraped the bottom of my car pretty badly, and I just stood the gawking, panicking inside that the guy my friend Niccole and I had been talking to couldn’t control his friend. The car robber squealed away down the street and I crumpled on the floor, my car was everything to me (at least in Tucson, my way of getting around and mainly of getting back home), and though I pushed him to his limits at times it was my car to do that with. I was sure this guy was never coming back, or if he did Rocco would be in pieces. A while later the car robber returned, he parked Rocco in front of me the engine still purring, not a scrap or a dent on him, just as he had been when the guy took off. He turned off the car and handed me my keys, which he had torn out of my hands just twenty minutes prior. I was enraged and almost heartbroken, in one movement he had built up a wall I never knew existed, and I hated him. He apologized and I couldn’t say a word. Niccole and I left without another remark to either guy.
***
I loved getting my car dirty, but I wouldn’t keep it dirty for long. At the most Rocco would be soiled for a week but as money grew tight – then basically nonexistent I had to ignore how filthy dirty he would get on the outside until it began to affect the inside. One day as I filled up my gas tank I decided to squeegee my windshield. Somewhere between the realization I hardly had money for a half tank of gas and the utter filthiness of my pearly white Rocco I decided to squeegee off a bit of the dirt on the roof of my car. The second the scrubber hit metal a voice boomed over the P.A. system “YOUNG LADY THIS IS NOT A CAR WASH.”
Mortifying because A. Obviously I knew it was not a car wash and B. I did not have enough money in this world to get a real car wash, yet my car needed one so badly I attempted to clean it with a squeegee.
***
For over a year I was the driver of the Nic(c)ole’s and myself, as one of them (Niccole) had nearly taken both of our lives in a rollover car accident (that was highly preventable), and the other Nicole did not have a car. One Christmas Nicole’s parents bought her a brand new pale blue Honda Civic 04. Understandably she was proud of her new car and wanted to show it off, but the way she explained her desire to drive her new wheels went something like this “Now we don’t have to drive around in your piece of shit car.” Which was surprising to me because (no offense to those that own the HC04) it’s not that cute a car. I was greatly offended, but I tried to brush it off as we piled into her car for a test drive.
Nicole began texting her boyfriend, while we drove down the street. “Hey I can text for you if you want!” I said, more demanding than requesting.
“No, I am saying some really inappropriate stuff.”
She ran a stop sign.
“Dude, I don’t care I will text for you.”
“No, I am good I can text and drive.”
“No, really you can’t, you just ran a stop sign.”
“I did?! I thought that was a yield sign.”
“Either way Nicole you didn’t even slow down.”
She laughed while Niccole, in the back seat, pulled her knees to her face. Only a few months prior was our accident which ended her up in a halo. I gripped the side of the door tightly, trying not to panic. Nicole typed away on her cell phone, continuing to tell me how great a driver she was when she blew through a stop light, and made a WILD left turn that had the other Niccole and I slammed into either passenger side door, holding onto it for dear life simultaneously trying to push with all our weight off of it for fear it might burst open.
Once safely on the other side I screamed “Nicole!”
She dropped her phone in her lap and gripped the wheel with both hands, to see no cars in front of us, she became instantly furious. “Why would you scare me like that?”
Niccole in back seat had her face buried in her hands and she looked like she was dry heaving.
“You just ran a red light, why would you scare us like that?!” I screamed in a voice that was not my own.
She wrenched her body around, saw said stop light and giggled “I thought that was a stop sign.”
“What the fuck Nicole you didn’t even try to stop… at all, in any scenario.”
“Chill out, you are almost home.”
We never rode in her car again, I was quite happy with my “piece of shit car” that got me safely from point A to point B. Mainly because I wasn’t delusional about my ability to text and drive.
***
Almost three years ago I sold Rocco to a mechanic friend of mine, because he didn’t have a car to get to his job forever far away and I couldn’t keep up with the silly little very expensive problems Rocco was having. When I sold him my boyfriend’s daughter cried, “I am really going to miss him.” I guess he was just one of those cars, like a dog that becomes a part of the family… which is weird I guess, but at the same time maybe you just needed to know the car.
-ducksoup- 