A Story about a Girl and Her Car (Part 1- I guess this is goodbye old pal)

Jackie wasn't always the dented mess she was on that Wednesday afternoon.  Infact, she once was a very classy lady.  When we met in 2003 she looked like a million bucks (luckily for me her looks and her actual price were vastly different, like 990000 different.)  When I drove her I knew she was the right girl for me and she has been my faithful friend for 8 years.  It hasn't always been easy.  We've had our differences of opinion, like when I wanted her to work and she decided her battery needed replacing.  But we've always come to an understanding.  So when I gently bumped her into another car I took it as a sign of my ever increasing maturity and care for Jackie that I took her into the shop the very next day and did not indulge in my favorite activity of procrastination.  Good Job, Me!  I thought as I drove away in my rental.  The universe must have thought so too because it promptly rewared me, in game show fashion, with a NEW CAR!!  Jackie's inguries were too severe and she was sent to a car farm where she has wide open spaces were she can use cruise-control all the time and there's a drive-thru car wash on every corner.

I'm not the type of person who gets attached to objects.  When my apartment got broken into a few months ago I wasn't hardly bothered by what they took.  Atleast not the objects themselves.  I lost all my pictures saved on my computer and camera and the script I'd been working on for a year but the computer and the camera themselves weren't that important.   But Jackie feels different.  I went to the garage the on the other night to collect my crap out of the car and to my own surprise I was struck with a ball of warm sadness at the base of my throat.  I realized that I would never see my car again that these were our last moments together.  When I dropped the car off at the shop I didn't expect that this would be it for her.  She was quite drivable.   I realized that I had developed a relationship with this car.  Jackie's not a thing, she's a pet.  I don't have any pets right now but that's what my relationship with Jackie felt like.  I spent more time with her than any one person in my life.  I talked to her.  I took care of her.  She wasn't the fanciest but she was mine.  I love the yet to be named new car, but I will really miss Jackie. 

Good bye old friend. 

Jacqueline Susann Johnson

Adopted Dec. 2003 - Died Jan. 2011