A Proud New Owner

I am the proud "new" owner of....

That's right a 2003 Honda Civic. I bought this beauty FIVE years ago when I started my first teaching job. I used to drive this

I called her "The Pickle." She was christened early in her life as my car by a errant deli tray I placed in the back seat. Since she was green and she smelled like a pickle, the name seemed suitable. In my house, when you called someone a "pickle" it meant that they weren't terribly easy to get along with. They were, in fact, acting grumpy or difficult. As fate would have it, this car became her name. The driver and passenger side windows did not roll down and the AC broke. These ailments came at the beginning of my teaching career while I was teaching summer school. I would arrive to teach summer school (at a very nice school where my students drove nicer cars than I did) soaked in sweat from my stifling drive to work.

The ultimate pickle experience came some time in January of 2003. I stepped out of my classroom one day, leaving my cellphone on my desk. I returned to find it missing and endured the tsking and head wagging of both my principal and the resource officer. It was a cold January day and I headed out to Verizon to beg for a new phone. With very little money (read: NONE)saved up, I wasn't very excited about purchasing a new phone at full price. Verizon, of course, offered to let me buy the same phone with insurance for $1 million dollars. A very generous offer on their part. While I didn't want to pay for the same new phone, I was still at the point where a cool cellphone mattered to me and would not succumb to the blue plastic Nokia that would later become my trademark (I was the proud owner of one of the largest cellphones known to humankind).

So I left the store empty handed. I was ready to drown my sorrows in the crackly sound of my grand am's radio and had just entered the on ramp to 71 South when I heard a sound that sounded like a million paper clips being flushed through my engine. Then I heard a loud smashing sound and I pulled to the side of the road. Very long story not so short, the transmission on my Grand Am died. I was on the side of the road in the pickle with no cell phone. I had to hike back to Verizon where I had left in tears to use their courtesy phone to call my roommates. After a few days of bickering and debating with the local Honda dealership, I came home with my baby. Those were the days.

My Finanical Situation in January 2003

Total Income: a generous teacher's salary but still not much

Bills: brand new gym membership, brand new cellphone (not paid for) and two year plan, rent in a dirty apartment with coin laundry, ridculous groceries that no 20-something person should buy (ie expensive cheeses and organic juice)

Savings: None

All this to say, I am very excited that my Honda is paid off.