The Nissan

I found a list of writing prompts online, one of which suggested writing about one's first car. Here's the result.

The Nissan. My first car. It wasn’t even mine, really, to begin with. My parents bought it when our 1989 Honda Civic kicked the bucket, and I don’t remember ever being so grateful for a new vehicle. I was only 14 at the time, and I’d seen a number of cars come and go in my life. But when the Nissan came along, man, I was actually kind of excited in a way I’d never been for a car before.

The Civic we’d had as long as I can remember. That thing was silver outside, gray inside, with standard transmission and a tape deck that more often than not scrambled our cassettes and left me with the job of winding the tape back up while my dad drove me to school. When the heat finally stopped working (in December, mind you) I’d bundle up in all my warmest things for the 20-minute back-road drive to the high school where I was a freshman, right next to the middle school where my dad taught fifth grade.

I helped shop around for cars, a little. My parents told me the next one they bought would most likely be the one I learned to drive in, so they figured I should have a least a little say in the matter. My dad wanted another standard, my mother insisted on automatic transmission. My mother won.

We bought the ‘97 Nissan Altima from a private seller who lived in a fancy house in a town I now can’t remember. I do remember getting in the car though once my dad wrote the check, and aw s**t. The thing heated RIGHT up. I even said something to my dad about it, who chuckled and said “It’s not really heating that fast. You’re just used to the Honda that didn’t heat at all.” Despite my dad’s quick shut down of my excitement, I was still grinning the whole way home.

A year and a half later, when I turned 16, I made my mom take me out right away to get my driver’s permit. I begged for what felt like forever, and was in fact just a few days until she took me to the DMV.  The same day, I begged her to take me out to a parking lot and show me the ropes of driving. After all, I’d been waiting since we bought the Nissan to sit behind the wheel, and now here I was, of legal age and totally pumped to try it out. My mom brought me to the church near our house, relinquished the driver’s seat, and instructed me to put the car into Drive. I did, and the car started moving forward on its own. This surprised me, “MOM! Why is it moving already?” She giggled at me and said “You’re driving, honey. That’s what happens with automatics.”  We took a few loops around the lot before my mom decided it was time to go home for dinner.

As the months went by, it became standard practice for me to hop in the driver’s seat and take charge of the wheel anytime we went anywhere as a family. I loved it. I knew it was technically OUR car, but I could never help feeling like it was MY car. The following February, I got my license and holy cow, what freedom! I drove home from the DMV with my mom in the passenger seat, saying how proud she was of me, and as soon as we got there, I hopped back on the road and drop to my high school to meet some friends who’d stayed after for art projects. I brought my temporary paper license inside with me, and showed it off to anyone who was interested. Paper freedom, baby!

My junior year, I started dating a guy who lived about a 45-minute to an hour-long drive down the highway from me, in central Connecticut (I grew up in Massachusetts, right on the state line).  That was where I really connected with my car, long trips down the road with the radio blasting and cruise control keeping my lead foot from getting me into trouble. When that first far-away guy and I broke up, I started dating a friend of his, so my highway driving continued in full.  Once I arrived in the boyfriend’s town, I’d pick him up and let him drive my car while I put my feet on the dashboard and reminisced about being ‘young’ again. We’d drive the car to an empty lot; sometimes behind a church, sometimes behind a school; and get naked and passionate in a way only 17-year-olds can in the back of a small sedan. I loved that car for every inch of its plain, tan, soft interior. I especially loved bringing the car back home, where no one knew the dirty secret we shared.

When I turned 18, I was no longer legally bound to get off the road by midnight and my generous, trusting parents never set an official curfew for me. My favorite drives were when I left Connecticut around 1am to get home around 2. The roads were so quiet and so empty, I felt like a lone vessel in a sea of black skies and yellow street lamps. The car became my sanctuary, and there was little I loved more than driving alone at night with the radio singing and the open highway stretched out before me like endless possibility.

Once I graduated, I moved to southern Maine and the Nissan, while still not officially mine, put in hundreds of highway miles with me on the weekends. My parents were generous enough to let me have it most of the time, as my Connecticut boyfriend was leaving for boot camp a few months after I moved away, and we only had some many weekends left until I no longer had a reason to drive 300 miles between Friday and Sunday. That was the time when my Nissan saw my sadness and saw me give myself pep talks about my ‘romatic’ situation. For 3 hours each way, that car was my best friend.

After my first year in college, I moved into an apartment with a couple of friends, and gave the Nissan back, full-time. I had a bike to get around town, and I got a job less than a ¼ of a mile from my place. I didn’t have that far-away boyfriend anymore, so I had no reason to get back to Massachusetts on a regular basis.I bummed rides to school and back, and shelled out little bits of gas money for friends who’d take me out for my errands.  After about 4 months, though, another good friend of mine was off to join the Army, and he wanted to sell his car before he left. I told my parents I wanted to buy it and needed their help and advice. They called me back the next day and said they were going to give me the Nissan instead. Well, halle-f*****g-lujah . I was getting ‘my’ car back. I was never so excited to go down to the BMV, and when the lady handed over my new Maine plates and assured the title would be coming in the mail, I grinned at her and said “Awesome!”

I drove that car around for another two years, and it became even more a part of me. I kept my bike, my Frisbees, my longboards, some condoms, an extra change of clothes, a blanket, a sleeping bag, extra sneakers, snacks, a couple bottles of water, and art supplies in the backseat, the glove box and the trunk. It was a second bedroom for everything I ever deemed necessary to have whilst out traipsing around the world.

The most memorable part of the car, at least for my friends, was the collection of ‘hippie’ bumper stickers I’d affixed to the rear bumper; ‘Make Love, Not War’; ‘nonviolent’ (in Rasta colors); ‘Peace’, spelled out in various religious symbols from around the world. It made the car easy to spot from pretty far away. I never lost it in a parking lot! I loved that car, even when the cruise control stopped working and the horn started beeping itself (that was a hell of a time). I loved it when the A/C kicked the bucket and when it shook at speeds over 70mph on the highway.  I loved it when I sold it for a newer, more efficient car.

Ironically, I sold my Nissan to buy a Honda Civic. Of course, it was an ‘02, not an ’89, but I still chuckled at the way things worked out when I brought my new Honda home. I listed my Nissan on craigslist, and within a week I had tons of replies. I finally sold it to a man in his late 40s, buying it as a new family car, and, get this, as the car his 16-year-old daughter was going to start driving around. I smiled when he told me, and I was straight-up grinning when I met his daughter and saw the look on her face as I handed her dad the key.

I followed the two of them to their house, took the plates off the Nissan, and took one last glance at the little car before waving goodbye and telling them to enjoy it. The man shook my hand and his daughter said thanks while grinning from ear-to ear.

I still see the Nissan around town. I’d taken all my bumper stickers off before listing it online, and that girl re-plastered it in no time. When I see the car, it looks pretty near identical to my sticker job, except her stickers are less hippie and more rock-and-roll. I can’t help but smile when I see her driving it around. I loved that car as much as anyone could love a vehicle, and though I feel a little weird about it, it genuinely makes me happy to see someone else loving it, too.