First off, my apologies for my rather prolonged absence. Nothing is wrong. It's just when the weather gets warm, it becomes less and less likely I will spend a weekend day inside writing but today is very hot and I've been outside a lot lately so thought I would spend some time writing a blog today. Wow, lucky day!
Lately I have had several friends and family members who have kids that are either graduating from high school or college. Many of those kids are being gifted with cars, which made me think back to when I was heading to college hoping that I would also be lucky and get a car. Looking back, I have no idea why I was so optimistic.
I thought it might be fun to jump in the Hot Tub Time Machine and go way back 35 years and give you you all a glimpse into the crazy mind of 22-year-old Barbie, a sassy senior Journalism major at Texas A&M University, and at the time a weekly columnist at my college's newspaper, The Battalion. If you missed the whole Barbie story, you can catch up here.
Being one of the very few liberals on campus and without question one of the most vocal because of said gig, my columns were typically met with more ire than most. Got loads of hate for my criticism of the students who destroyed the shanty shacks that had beeen set up on campus to protest The Apartheid in South Africa. You can't even step on certain grass on campus without getting yelled at. Yeah, it's a thing.
I eventually decided it was safer to just write about my life instead of tackling political topics. Less hate mail that way.
So behold, the very earliest version of the "World According to Barb," that originally posted in 1988. Sadly, you will see my writing hasn't evolved much and my sense of humor is still quite immature today, to which you can all attest.
Oh, Joy the Search for the Perfect Auto
Over the past weekend several important newsworthy events happened. The US warship mistakenly shot down an Iranian jetliner killing, all 290 passengers, Attorney General Edwin Meese announced his resignation, and my parents bought me a new car. Well, it's not really new, but close enough.
This might not seem to some of you as a monumental event, but then again maybe I should back up and bit and fill you all in on the whole story.
First off, I must explain a little about my parental unit. My parents believe firmly in two principles: One is that regardless of the amount of money one has, children are not to be spoiled. They must work for things they want and not just be given them.
The second principle is that a car is simply a mode of transportation from Point A to Point B, not material possession. As a result, my family's driveway resembles a used car lot. In my family, you don't stop driving a car until it stops running. My dad still brags of a car he once owned, appropriately named the "Vomit Comet," which he bought off a friend for $50 and drove for two years.
A lot of kids, when embarking on their freshman year, are given cars for graduation gifts by their parents. Well Bob and Barb Jones were not those parents. It was entirely out of the question. "But all my friends are getting to take cars to school," I pleaded to no avail. My parents were not ones to fall for that sort of logic.
Fortunately, it turned out to not be such a tragedy since I was living on campus and everything could be access on foot.
My sophomore year I again pleaded for a car; instead, I got a bike. Not a new bike, but a friend of my Mom's Sears Jiffy 3-speed with goober handlebars and a basket with plastic flowers hanging off the front. I was horrified. I was going to be living off campus with no car.
The nearest grocery store was three-fourths of a mile away. To get my groceries home, I would have to steal a grocery cart and cross a busy 4-lane road and push it all the way back to my apartment—a very humbling experience. I would try and look as it had forgotten where I had parked my non-existent car. My friends called me the "bag lady." What are friends for?
Then came my junior year, and I felt assured that this was going to be my lucky year. Well, there was good news and bad news. Yes, I was going to have a car to take to school with me. The bad news was the car I had to take.
Close your eyes and imagine every student's idea of a nightmare car. Yes, that's right a station wagon! Not just any station wagon, however, but the same one my parents bought when I was 11. It had 130,000 miles on it and it definitely was showing its age. Now imagine the worst color imaginable. Right again...Yellow!
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Since the car had been collecting dust in the driveway for a decade and not driven in ages, I felt certain the old bomb wouldn't start. My (bad) luck continued, and the "Banana Mobile" as my friends called it, started on the first try with a sizable cloud of blue smoke bellowing from its tailpipe. Lucky me, right?
So off I went cruising in the Banana Mobile. Now considering the advanced age of said car and high millage, I knew the humiliation of driving this car would be short-lived, and excitedly looked forward to its dying day. Well, it lived and it lived. It was the eternal automobile, and I felt sure that this car would see my death before its own ultimate demise.
[SIDE NOTE: For some reason I don't add (probably because it was humiliating) that one day, the entire rusted-out bumper fell off and rolled down the street, just as I was driving past the Dixie Chicken, the school hangout bar. This bumper was made of steel and the size of a modern-day Kia Rio, so obviously I kept driving. I thought that would warrant a trade-in of sorts, but no. my mom just drove it to the junk yard and for $20 I got a new (old) bumper that came with a "Honk if you love Jesus" sticker. Yep, that happened. Sorry, back to story.]
I drove it my entire junior year and senior years, and just when I thought I would have to hire a contract killer to get rid of this vessel, it happened. While I was home for the weekend this spring, my Dad discovered some major problems and deemed it unsafe to drive. That was one of the happiest days of my life. I was finally going to get a car...or so I thought.
Sunday rolled around and no new car had materialized. My parents smugly handed me the keys to the maxi-van. It is not a merely a van, mind you, but at MAXI-van—a whopping 3 feet longer than your average van.
I stared at them in disbelief. I once thought you would have to work really hard to find a car that is less cool than the wagon, but let me tell you a white, wood-paneled (because they got a deal) maxi-van is about as close to uncool as one can get...unless you do airport pickups for a living.
"You will have to drive this for a couple of weeks or so until we find something else," my mom said. Well, the weeks turned to months, and I was beginning to think I was cursed. But indeed, it happened, and the rest is history. I now have my new own car--and it's not yellow!
UPDATE: Once my siblings and I finished college and moved away, my parents immediately moved to buying only expensive premium cars.
Summer is here
The season we all live in Chicago for is here! I hope everyone is having a great one, thus far. I promise to write a few more blogs before summer ends, have a few topics in mind. Until then, I hope this finds everyone healthy and happy.
Ciao for now,
Barb(ie)
Missed any blogs? Links below!
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