What was your first car?

I was whipping down the freeway on Saturday on my way to the CC for SPRT (that awesome day when the trainers get to persecute the incoming crisis clinic volunteers by simulating phone calls and seeing how the new kids handle it. From the trainer side, it’s a barrel of laughs. Frequently we are leaning against each other laughing as we listen to someone’s telephonic antics while they are doing a call. We are brilliant models of the mentally ill. If only the truly mentally ill were as amusing as we are at SPRT. For the trainees it is a nerve-wracking day that not infrequently reduces them to tears as they worry about failing their final exam. Perspective is everything in life, I suppose).

As I zoomed along the freeway in anticipation of being a suicidal caller, I was admiring once again the way that it is impossible to not break the law when you are on a motoscooter. It is all power and response under your control, and you feel exactly like the moment when Wile E. Coyote is strapped to the rocket and it takes off with his body while his head sits there with a stunned look for a moment before disappearing after the rocket in a poof of smoke.

If this had been my first car, I thought, I would have grown up to be a very different kind of person. But it wasn’t my first car. My first car was in ’87 when I was sixteen, and it was a 1980 Toyota Celica, white.

It was a hatchback that was classified for insurance purposes as a sports car, and from certain angles it did have a sporty look to it, but any power it originally had was long gone. You thought twice before passing and accepted that you were going to tackle hills in no great hurry. The hatchback was handy, though, for filling full of boxes and whatnot to haul to college in fall and then back again over summer.

Neighborhood vandals once broke off the side-mirrors, and when it became apparent that I was in no hurry to fork over the hundred and change to replace them, my parents gave me an ultimatum – replace the mirrors or you can’t drive. That ended up being a lesson that stuck, and I’ve been good forever after at pretty quickly taking care of car stuff that needs taking care of.

After a time, the headlight switch burned out such that the only working function was my high beams. For a long while I drove around high-beaming everyone until a cop pulled me over and I had to lie that it had just started happening and swear-to-god, I’m taking it to the shop next week! After that, I pulled the wires out of the control stick and jury-rigged them to a house light-switch, of the kind that are installed in the wall. I felt really clever about that, and it served me well for quite a while.

Anyway, but the point is, as was my first car, so also have I also turned out to be. We both will do anything, but are going to take a little time to think it over to be sure of success. We’re clever and dependable and sporty only in our minds. The car basically just ran for me, and I was delighted to run it into the ground without caring too much about its looks (for a while, after it got in an accident, I was climbing in through the window, or entering via the passenger side and crawling across the center console), and sure enough, as an adult, I like things for their utility rather than their looks, and I like using things up before moving on to something new.

So my pet theory of the week is that your teen-age car is an excellent indicator for your adult personality.

Cameron at the CC had a sweet spyder as a teen, but it was a major fixer that he put an engine in himself and whatnot. And what is he doing as a grownup but still fixing, only now he’s working on adults in the social services industry!

I think it is an excellent theory, but so far haven’t managed to ping enough people who had cars in their teens to really validate it.

But boy, if I had had a crazy power-car, or, god forbid, a motorcycle for my first car, my whole perspective on the world would be different. I might well have been the kind of person who just slams forward without a plan, trusting on momentum and the world to take care of me. I would probably have a far superior wardrobe instead of my current “look, I’m not naked” clothes. Being more fearless would certainly make me better with the ladies on the front-end of relationships.

It’s hard not to play what-if games. Where would I be living now if I had had a fast car as a kid? What would I be doing for a job? Would I be on my second or third divorce already? What would I be spending money on?

So, yeah, you should comment and tell me what your teenage car was and whether you see parallels between your relationship with that car and how you interact with the world today!

Also, on my copy*paste clipboard is, “That’s the ultimate purpose of everything — existence and self-delight in existence.” Where on Earth did that come from? It’s insightful, but... weird. I don’t remember putting it there and can’t seem to find it anywhere on the Internet or any of my local docs now. Anyone want to claim authorship?