My First Car

 Oh THE first car. 

Not MY first car but the first car that was 'mine', was a 1963 or '64 Plymouth and dad paid $300.00 for it, a pretty good deal at the time, I'm sure.  It was sky blue with the same color interior and it had a push button ignition!  That was cool, nobody else had a push button dashboard. Push button windshield wipers and headlights, too.  Now, it certainly wasn't the car I learned to drive in, that was a 1954 Chevrolet.  Looked like a big box with wheels, kind of like babies' feet, no shape, just something that gets you from point A to point B.  Still, for a 17 year old girl, it was freeeedom!
 
One weekend I spent washing and waxing it, cleaning the interior and getting it all as spiffy looking as I could so it wasn't too much of an embarrassment to drive or be recognized in since there were a few dings in it.  It didn't look too bad by the time I was done, other than the missing hubcap.

  I remember coming home from school one day and as I walked closer and closer to the driveway, I could see spots all over my car.  Literally SPOTS, great big forest green spots!  "What the heck is that?" I'm thinking.  The closer I got the bigger the spots were and I simply could not figure out how they got there, they weren't there when I left that morning (must have been some reason why I couldn't drive it yet...).
Later that evening when I could catch my dad alone,  I asked him what happened to the car and why were there big green spots all over it?  "Well, I took a can of whatever spray paint I had and spray painted all the rust spots, honey!" 

Oh! My! Gosh! You! Didn't, Dad!!!  Why on earth would you do something like that?  I waxed it, Dad!  "Well, wouldn't want that thing to rot out from underneath you now".
At the time, I thought that was the stupidist thing I had ever heard.  Besides, it wasn't like it was a NEW car.  And it wasn't going to fall to pieces underneath me because I wouldn't have it that long, Daaaaad. 

Luckily, I didn't get that car until right after I graduated from school, so no one I knew would see me driving it.  Or so I thought...

  I drove that for two weeks until I got tired of hearing how I was the owner of the clown car, everyone I knew seemed to see me in that Dr. Seuss car.  So another weekend came and I spent that weekend taking an SOS pad and scrubbing EVERY SINGLE one of those green spots off!  It was hard and it took me almost the whole weekend, but by gosh, by Monday my car was all one color again and "spiffy" just like before.
I find it slightly amusing that that car survived ME and I eventually sold it for $200.00.   That summer, I played with that car!  I used to take it out with my childhood buddy, Chris, and we'd go drive to places we'd never been to before.  Once we drove out into the country, out by Lawrence Livermore Labratory, when there were still rolling green hills and cows in the fields.  We found another place that had been used by others in Jeeps, they didn't really have ATV's back then in 1972.  We thought it would be fun to try some of those hills until I high-centered it once and that was the last time I went joy riding like that.  I do not remember how we got it off the mound, probably a safety valve in my mind because the reality was too scary.

But you know, that little car took me to my first job that summer after graduating, it took me to my boyfriends' house and to the store and all those myriad trips we have to make when we first get our license.  I loved driving, never got tired of hopping in it to go somewhere.  And I bet I even cruised the boulevard in Walnut Creek at least once.   I know I did when I got my REAL cool car, the one I paid for...

But it wasn't until years later as Dad and I were sitting and reminiscing about our youth--and his first car was a Model T!--I spoke up about those gigantic, hideous green spray painted spots he put on that car.  "Well.." he says, "You know why I did that, don't you?"  Uh..duh dad.  So the rust spots wouldn't grow. 

"I did that so I could easily find your car anywhere in town...".  Yes Dad, now I understand.  I still love you and I still miss  you.   Bless you for loving me!  (:

@#$%! Modern Hostage Taking by Inanimate Objects

This morning I was once again a prisoner of the modern age. 
This seems to be happening more and more often.  First it was a tv and not being able to decipher between 4 different remotes which one would turn the dang thing on and my first ranting of, "Whatever happened to SIMPLE?  I just want to turn the tv ON!".  That was over 7 years ago. 
The next hostage event was just last year with the washing machine.
We had a front loader.  Once you lock your program down, that's it for the duration, no matter if you left a thousand dollar bill in your pocket or  your last photo of your great-great-grandmother, you W-I-L-L N-O-T access that item until THE MACHINE has completed it's cycle.  Why?  Because you'd flood your floor if you opened the door.  It seemed to happen a lot and it does when you are a little older; you forget to take something out of  your pockets, although having a clean lip balm is rather nice as long as it doesn't make it into the dryer, then it's not pretty.  I now have a top-loading (BUT water-saving!!) washing machine--which I still have to babysit so I can have PLENTY of rinse water for my clothes; otherwise they get shredded in about 3 cups of rinse water, almost like scrubbing  your clothes on a rock--but I can fix that by putting the cycle back on wash and filling the tub with PLENTY of water and turning it back to rinse. Ha ha, Whirlpool, you can't fool me!!
And today?  I was held hostage by a porn video on my cellphone!!  Uh huh, that's what I said.  I had just received a text message from my son and it was literally INTERRUPTED by an urgent notice informing me I had an incoming text video.  I sort of assumed that it was Mike sending a photo of something and when it first loaded, it looked like two hands being  held.  Then the audio began and it was a strange mix of oohing and cooing.  So, having had a few friends who just had babies, I thought someone was sending me a video of a parent grasping a babies' hand with the baby making those cute little baby noises.
AND THEN IT GOT GRAPHIC!!
Oh oh, that's NO BABY, I said to myself, oh my that's NOT FROM MICHAEL, either!!
I hurriedly STOPPED the video which seemingly incurred the wrath of THE MACHINE and all of a sudden my phone was totally incapacitated.  There was a blank white screen and on the front of my phone the message read: PLEASE WAIT WHILE THE APPLICATION IS BEING DISABLED.
Twenty minutes of disability.
I could not turn the phone off, I could not change the effect by pushing any other button whatsoever.
I was trapped by a silent moaning nasty.  And then I got mad.  I couldn't call anyone because...they're all locked inside my cell phone!  I had to disconnect my computer and thank heavens for call forwarding because I called the hubby on his cell phone from the land line (which was forwarded to  his cell phone) and I got a hold of a friendly human.  "Kevin, I have a porno video on my phone and it won't let go of me!"....."What?"...I said: I got a porno video and it has taken over my phone and won't let me shut down or do anything on the phone.  And here comes the voice of confidence and reason, "Well, just take the back off the phone and take out the battery", he says.  "How do you do that?" I asked.  As Hubby went into the diatribe of the how-to, I lost my tracking and all the things he was saying didn't make any sense.  "Oh, I'll just figure it out, bye!".  Because he's at work, the poor guy is probably still wondering what is going on. 
After I calm down and the brain starts to click in, I got back online with the computer and emailed my daughter for her brothers' phone number, once I received that, I was about to call my son when, miracle of miracles, my cell phone rings and it breaks the back of Little Miss Porn Star.  Hooray!!
I had tried to remove the back of the cell phone but apparently that only works when you accidentally drop the phone.  When Michael came over (because he was listening to his hysterical and freaking out mother), he immediately deleted the offending message--so no, I do not know who sent it--but showed me how simple it was to remove the back cover.  Without dropping it.