In my CAR, pervert.

I was flying down the highway, on my way to work, when I simultaneously saw a truck coming up way to fast behind me, and a mail truck breaking a little to fast in front of me. When I hit my breaks, I saw the truck behind me head for the other lane, except there was already a car there. Breaks squealed, the truck fishtailed really close to the back of my car, and I honked my horn, in a desperate attempt to magically move the mail truck so that I could hit the gas and get the hell out of the way. Somehow, the truck stopped in time.

I currently drive a Blue Neon, affectionately named CAR2D2, because it's my second car, and it's blue. It's been a little sick lately, but overall, it's a pretty good car. I really, really like driving a standard. Kind of a power trip.

I crashed a car for the first time when I was 16, pre-driver's license. I was stupidly driving my Dumb Boyfriend's car, in a stupidly busy student parking lot, when I stupidly cut too hard backing out of a space, and stupidly bashed in the side of another car. I don't think I'd quite absorbed the physics of how a car moves yet, not to mention the force behind it.

Now, I couldn't just run into anyone's car. It had to be a girl who I HAD been friends with, but we had one of those spectacular high school falling outs. (Fallings out?) My passengers (of COURSE I had passengers - I don't think high school students are permitted by law to ever be in a car alone) in the backseat bailed. Because he had insurance and I didn't (not having a license and all), and we were SO slick at 16, Dumb Boyfriend and I switched places, and promptly got busted by her dicksmack male friend. I wasn't charged, but I was responsible.

That is also the story of how I got my first job.

I didn't have my own car until my junior year of college. Because I'm exquisitely spoiled, my dad bought me a car as an early graduation present, so I'd be able to get around that summer and the next year. (Of course, he bought my sister a car for the same reasons, and she never graduated, so this is obviously not a binding contract.) Thus the birth of Toby The Toyota Tercel. Toby had just wrapped up a tour as a circus freak, "The Stubbiest Car in the Whole World!" and was ready for a home.

I loved him dearly, but Toby had some problems. The main one being, he liked to get hit by other cars. A lot. In the year and a half that Toby and I were together, Toby was the victim of seven - that's right, seven - hit and run accidents. Oh, only I was never, ever in the car.

My mom hit it once (while driving my dad's car - she was in big trouble when she got home that night), and my friend Rob's mom hit it once. None of the other five fuckers left a note. Toby was also affectionately known as, "The Magnet." Well, affectionately the first 4 times. After that, he was called, "Oh, For Fuck's Sake! Not AGAIN! What The Fuck Is WRONG With People?!"

Toby once helped me almost hit the same ex-boyfriend twice in the same week, once on the way to court. He was always good for a late-night grocery run. One time, visiting my sister at Kent State, Toby wouldn't start. After a day of waiting for a tow truck, being towed, and paying a mechanic, I learned about a little safety feature in the Tercel, where you could slide out this piece of plastic, and the car won't start. Huh. Toby was also the chariot for a number of speeding tickets. If you're adding up my insurance rates in your head by this time, keep going. They were HIGH.

Toby carried me all around Ohio. That time in Kent State was the only time I can remember Toby not starting, and that wasn't even his fault. Overall, Toby was a good, good little car.

Until one fateful day in June of 1999.

I had been dating Neal for a month or so, and had practically moved into his Mt. Vernon house. I was also several months into my first radio news job, as an anchor/reporter for an AM station in Marion, The Most Depressing Town There Ever Was. My commute was about 50 minutes each morning, but I had found an apartment and was in the process of moving, so I constantly had a trunk-full of crap in the back of Toby.

That Fateful Morning, I was a little early for work, so I wasn't even driving all that fast (for me). Neal and I had gotten Chinese the night before, so sitting beside me on the seat were leftover Hunan Chicken, plus a bowl and fork for heating-up-at-lunch purposes. There was happy music on the radio, the weather was clear and cool, and I was making good time.

As I came out of yet another one of those small towns that are sprinkled alongside all Ohio roads, the speed limit picked back up, but the car in front of me didn't. I drove into the oncoming lane and quickly passed the car. As I zipped back into our lane, I remember distinctly thinking, "Since I'm not late, I'm not going too fast, but I'm a little over the speed limit. I might as well plug in the radar detector, just in case."

I reached into the glove box to fish out the fuzzbuster, and as I did so I moved the wheel a little to the right. When I straightened back up and looked at the road, my right front tire wasn't on it anymore. It was snagged in the grass on the right hand side. I quickly jerked (I know, you're never supposed to jerk) the wheel to the left, and found myself skidding sideways across the road, right in the path of an oncoming car.

Continued tomorrow.