The End of an Era

Tomorrow my aunt and uncle will come to take away the reason that K and I became a couple nearly ten years ago. The little green Ford Escort wagon that K has driven since before I've known her developed a blown cylinder last fall and has been sitting in our carport gathering pollen, spiderwebs and dirt dauber nests ever since.

It may seem weird that a car, and not even that swanky of one, would be important to the founding of a major relationship, but in this case, it was. My parents sent me to school without a vehicle and I had to show up two weeks early before freshman year for training for the computer technician job I'd be working on campus. At the time, K had been in the same work program for a year and was there for the same training session. The first day went normally and I don't think we even left main campus, but I had seen K and had taken an interest already. The second day we had to watch training videos in the morning in the library and I got there a little early and K (and another girl who would end up back in Macon by the second semester) sat down next to me. We talked a little during the session, which is surprising given the fact that I've always had very poor social skills in situations involving unfamiliar people, and I was even worse around girls before I met K and no longer had to worry about keeping open the option of getting into said girl's pants. Yes, the fact that most of my close friends from college are women is because I already had K and felt no need to impress any of them. She took the pressure off and made me a slightly less socially-uncomfortable person. Thanks to K I'm now able to look at women as people instead of potential lays. Either that or I started escaping the mad hormones of puberty about the same time I met K. Because, really, asking a teenage boy to look at a girl and not think about the sexual possibilities is pretty much impossible. It really sucks, especially if you're the kind of guy who doesn't want to be that kind of guy.

It wasn't until lunch that the car came into play, however. Like I said earlier, I had no vehicle and this became a problem when they announced that after lunch we'd have to head up to the Ford buildings (probably a 3/4 of a mile walk uphill, which doesn't sound like a big deal until you realize that this was mid-August in a city that despite its northerly location is one of the hottest spots in Georgia.) I really didn't want to walk, but I also kind of hoped that K would offer to drive me, so I called out to the group as we dismissed if anyone could drive me up to the Ford buildings after lunch. After all, I couldn't make it obvious and just ask for K to give me a lift. That would have required way too much social bravery for me. K, just as planned, offered me a ride.

Everything was going to plan until I started walking over from my dorm to K's only to find that I couldn't find her dorm. Her dorm was actually attached to another dorm with a different name. K had said her dorm was behind Morton, but she failed to mention that it was also the same building as Morton despite being labeled as a separate dormitory. That little tidbit could have helped. I honestly started thinking she was just blowing me off. My self-esteem pretty much assumed that I had no chance as a default interpretation of events. I could find the sign for Morton but couldn't find the sign for K's dorm in the time I had to look, so I started walking up hill and eventually hitched a ride from one of the many guys in the program. Not exactly what I was looking for unless I had been looking to score some pot, which I wasn't at the time. My experience with pot was pretty much the same as my experience with women at the time.

K mocked me heartily once I got to the Ford buildings, a recurring theme in our relationship, but then explained the dorm situation and drove me back to main campus at the end of the day. Over the next two days, we spent a lot of off time together. K invited me to go watch a movie at one of her male friends' dorm rooms and to the movies in town with the girl she had sat with when she sat next to me on that second day of the training session. Actually, all of our interactions for that first week involved this other girl. Yep, this was looking totally promising. She was dragging me to some other dude's place and kept dragging this other girl to all of outings. For all I knew she was trying to hook me up with this other girl.

Did I mention my self esteem issues?

And I should probably break away from the story here for a brief disclaimer. While I honestly did prefer K for some reason (I know why now, but I barely knew K then, and the other girl was honestly amply attractive), I would have been perfectly fine at the time had I managed to hook up with either. I was 18 and the closest I'd had to a girlfriend by this point had been some extended flirtations with girls in high school that had proven awkward and frustrating. Honestly, I was just looking for a girlfriend and I was hoping she wouldn't turn out to be a prude or some sort of control freak.

It didn't take too long for me to figure out which one really liked me. K invited me to drive down to her hometown with her that first Friday of our two weeks training session and by that night we had had our first kiss and were an official couple. Four years later we were married and have been for nearly six years. Actually, despite the jokes about my doubts and self esteem issues, K never made me feel insecure or doubt her feelings for me. I could be totally awkward and unsure of myself and she always seemed so comfortable with me and she radiates this air that just makes you feel like you've known her forever. If she hadn't been that kind of person, I would have bolted long before we got serious like I had with those girls in high school. It's much easier to run away than it is to risk rejection.

Or death by man-eating rabbits, but that's a different story entirely.

And that car was there for all of it, except for the man-eating rabbits of course. It was the device used to get some more time with K at the very beginning. It was the method of transportation to get us down to Marietta for our first kiss and it's been a major part of our lives ever since until the last couple of years when we started carpooling to work and it eventually more or less died on us.

I could be all mushy here and say the reason we couldn't bear to part with the car until now was because of the sentimental value it held for us, but honestly we were just too lazy to call around to find the best price and get rid of the damn thing until recently. It actually would still be sitting there with no decision made if my aunt hadn't called and offered to match our highest offer and then come and get it for us. It was an offer we couldn't refuse.

It'll be kind of sad to see it go, but not really that much.