What Car Thing Did You Have To Learn The Hard Way?

It’s theorized that there are four main ways to learn; visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and reading/writing. I propose that a fifth, and much more common form of learn that should be included is pain. Pain is a wonderful instructor. Really, the best.

Tom Pelphrey Will Never Forget His Saturn SL2

The first car that was well and truly mine, not a hand me down or one I had to share with my twin sister, was a 2004 Saturn Ion. Was it the most expensive, fastest, most driver-engaging vehicle? No, but it got me to college and my three jobs like a trooper.

After college, I moved in with my best friend who, it turned out, was an absolute nightmare of a mess of a person. After her beater died, she kept spending money on the shittiest of replacements until finally her funds and people willing to pawn off broken pieces of shit on her, ran out. Because I could take the bus downtown to work, I let her drive my car. My baby. The most expensive, reliable, adult thing I owned.

She absolutely trashed it.

Responsibility wasn’t high on her list of shit to worry about. She somehow got road salt on the inside of the windshield. She’d take my care to meet up with hook ups or drive aimlessly despite this being a work-and-back-only arrangement. At one point a “friend” she had just met stole my car to buy drugs. She dumped an entire container of laundry soap in the back seat and didn’t clean it up because “it’s not my car” and “it’s just a crappy little Saturn. I owned a BMW!” (that BMW ran for a week and was never seen again.) It hurt to see something I was so proud of, that I worked so hard for, so thoroughly disrespected by a friend.

I realized two things: a. I was being a doormat and this would only keep happening if I kept being a doormat and b. I would never lend my car to anyone again. I’ve stayed true to my word, only allowing people to take my personal car for a day or two occasionally, and only family.

My story has a happy ending. I last saw this so-called friend while driving my newly detailed Saturn over to my little sister, who was inheriting the stalwart compact car. She was waiting for a bus. That Saturn ran without complaint for 250,000 miles before dying an honorable death in a fuel pump explosion.