Cupholders

The green car has been a part of the family for quite some time. I remember driving home in the new (and pretty much the most awesome) car and proclaiming to mom and dad, "I hope we have this car when I turn 16 so I can drive it!"...(I was 8 at the time) Well dreams do come true because it's the car I drove every day to high school. And it was no longer cool. Don't get me wrong, I was grateful to have a car that got me from point A to point B (at least most of the time it would get me where I needed) but it definitely wasn't the hot car on the lot (the school parking lot that is).

Not long after we got the car we made a trip to some junk yard (at least I think it was a junk yard) and mom found a new middle row seat that would fit 3 munchkins instead of 2 the original seats would fit. And the magical thing about that treasure we found in the junk yard was that the seat pattern matched the original seats!

The newness has pretty much well worn off since that first drive home. I hit my first bunny in the green car. It's on its second transmission. It has a (if not more) missing hubcap, the car has to warm up before driving it...even in the summertime...because it's not to warm up for the comfort of the driver but so the steering wheel will actually turn. The shocks...well, there are no shocks. Going over speed bumps inevitably means bottoming out and scraping the tail of the car along the pavement. There are fruit snacks permanently melted into the ceiling and onto the window. The horn no longer works. The door handle broke so in order to get out of the drivers seat from the inside dad had to jimmy rig it with a metal wire that we pulled in order to open the door. The air conditioning works sometimes but only if the driver (or passenger, if there is one) reaches over to the passenger side and kicks (really hard, by the way) under the glove box (cause I guess that's where the central air control center is...). But then mom got smart and bought a golf club to keep in the car. It's saved us from further damaging our toes. And from heat strokes.

I had some friends in high school who decided it would be fun to take my car keys and drive the car (quite wildly) through a pasture. Ruined the gears (or something quite major to the functioning of the car) which I didn't discover until I started driving home and couldn't go more than 15 mph without revving the engine to dangerous levels. 3 miles up the road I decided I would never make it home at this rate and was really scared I'd ruin the car....if it wasn't already completely toast. So I called dad who came and rescued me. And fixed the car. And told me not to let my friends (at least the immature boy ones) take my keys.

The windows. The green car windows don't like to go up and down. We had to manually (and I mean literally manually) push the window up after rolling it down. That is if it would even roll down to begin with. And on the days that it decided it didn't want to roll down we would drive through the drive-thrus backwards... yep, they thought we were crazy. I think we were innovative. (remember that, sister missionaries?! That was fun!) Then dad decided that he would fix the window. And he did. Except that now the wires are backward and so up is down and down is up. And fixing that quirk about it is on the project list, but at the bottom.

Mom hit a horse with the green car. Well, correction...a horse ran out in front of mom and...well the green car won. But not without battle scars..a dent in the right hand side, a messed up mirror, and a broken antenna...meaning Anneka (who now drives the car) has a music selection of oldies and...oldies. Her remark, "When I have to drive the green car I just jam out to the oldies." (She's a good sport.)

The brakes are sticky. The driver can wiggle the steering wheel quite liberally and not veer the tires even a little bit. The sun visor doesn't vise very much sun because it just dangles if it's not in its unused position. Opening the back door is taking the risk of throwing your back out...it requires repeatedly bouncing the whole back of the car in a rhythmic motion while pulling the handle.

But, the green car is still chugging along, it's just not our first choice of transportation. Because there are fewer kids left at home they decided to put the original two seater middle row back in. Mom, Shelby, and Brynna were going somewhere the other day and one of the twins specifically requested that they take the green car. Take the green car, say what?! The white car is always the first choice. Mom asked why they wanted to take the green car...because the "new" (aka "original") seats have cup holders that pull out from underneath them. And that's awesome.

It's the simple things in life, right? Like cupholders.