goodbye purple dinosaur

i sold my 1992 honda civic on saturday, after driving it for 13 years and 131,000 miles. it was my first car, and it cost $10,000. i bought it using $5,000 of my own money: my mom and step dad paid the other half, as was our deal. i was 17, and it was the july before my senior year in high school. the car had a manual transmission, and so my first efforts to drive it were awkward and frightening. my friend lbt named it "the purple dinosaur," due to its mauve color and the fact that the headrests were shaped like brontosaurus heads. the name stuck and the car stuck to me. little did i know then how completely it would stick.

once i got over my fears of driving it, i made a "new car driving mix" mixtape. i rolled down all the windows and just drove. i'd never felt so independent. i pasted band stickers (obnoxiously) all over the back of the car: most of the bands i liked at that time didn't make stickers, so i made my own at kinko's. pavement, archers of loaf, blues explosion, a matthew sweet dinosaur. i also pasted some stickers on the interior, including an "i love math" sticker that was still on the rearview mirror on saturday when i sold it.

it would be impossible to recount all the places i went in that car, the people who rode in it with me, the things that happened in it, and the times it comforted me while i just drove and cried. but the highlights include a trip to the new jersey shore with my best girl friends, a trip to kansas with my sister to surprise my dad for his 50th birthday, towing it to washington, dc when i moved here in 2006, driving to chapel hill with ice and darkness and lcw to see superchunk and archers of loaf, and driving back to atlanta after graduating from law school.

the purple dinosaur never broke down, but in its golden years, it definitely lost some of the sparkle of youth. the radio was down to one crackly speaker, and i could no longer decipher what radio station i was listening to. the air conditioner was broken, and the car flooded when it rained. defrost was a hazy memory. one of the windows wouldn't roll down, and the driver's side door made a strange rattle when i shut it. it was heavily tattooed with scratches and dings. (i once ruined the finish on the hood with a brillo pad and blamed it on my brother). but it still ran like a dream.

i'll really miss the purple dinosaur. it was very hard to give it one last pat on saturday before driving off the lot with a brand new honda CRV. but it was time. things change and life recycles and we move on. i'm thankful that i've gotten to a point in my life when i have the means to replace my old car with a new one, and i will feel much safer on the road to georgia this christmas. i do feel a loss, but it's not a sad loss. just the feeling of knowing that my past is now officially in my past. i guess it's the feeling of growing up.