(no subject)

Letting GO Already, Chapter 2

More like the Preamble?

Okay, see THIS is the tough one.
So much so I'm not quite sure where to start.

I s'pose our story starts in 1996, when Furd decided to say, to-HELL-with-the-focus-groups and unleash this car on the American public. We know damn well every one of them overestimates the price of this car ten grand cuz they mistake it for a specialty car every time they see one. Not the family car. Toyoter and Honda and all the imports are breathing heavily on the market we worked so hard to wrestle from Oldsmobile.

Every time one passed on the road, my classically oppositional-defiant ex couldn't help but burble like her then-infant Midgety daughter. It was so sleek and DIFFERENT and actually cool-looking. It was the first--and mind you, only--time the two of us agreed on a car.

Actually, a lot of people agreed on it. It would represent the last time an American auto would lead the car segment in annual sales. (These days they don't even have the fifth best-selling car; it's generally Camry-Accord-Altima-Corolla-Civic, with an occasional change in order. But I digress)

My first one (just before they robbed it of most of its style) was sort of a baby blue with an oddly balky tranny. No one could ever figure out exactly why it got skittish in low RPMs, even a J-Dub guy I personally knew who was his dealer's tranny specialist. But on the other hand, it never left me on the side of the road. Any coaster geeks from way-back-when remember the CPlaya 100? Yup. That was the car. Or when my sister started missionary work in Panama? Twenty-plus hours each way to her graduation ceremony. Okay, fine--Compounce and Dorney, too. To say nothing of my final 16-hour nonstop drive from Carlisle, PA back home in the L. I logged an AWFUL lot of miles behind that wheel. I never really approved of the ex's boneheaded plans to replace it with a DVD-wielding minivan. Hey, flat panels were pretty spendy in 2002.

Anyway, when things changed they way they did and the new life began and the too-sexy-for-its-own-good Pimpmobile came down with its last major mechanical problem, I bought another one. Add a way-too-expensive extended warranty in case its tranny went goofy, too (never did) and all sorts of hijinks ensued. Tho never quite like that crappy Corsica.

Which brings us to--was it even a month ago? Not really--in which Brenda wound up marooned on the side of the road with HER car and next thing you know, we wound up sorta like this:



But at the same time, a three-car, two-people family.

You might have some idea where this will go next.
Almost but not quite......dotty dot dot........