The first car that I spent some time driving was my parents 1991 red Dodge Spirit.  It lived through most of my siblings despite being crashed a few times, never by me.  I think the picture I have provided was it’s final crash which happened during the time that Zach and I lived in Ohio.

I got to drive it to school mostly because my parents were too tired to get up to drive me to early morning seminary.  I would wake one of them up to drive me and they’d say “you can just take the car.”  After awhile I used to hope that they’d be too tired because it meant I got to drive home from school instead of spending an hour riding home on the school bus.  My senior year of High school I got a job at Heidelberg College Cafeteria and I remember singing along to the radio as I drove to and from work in the Spirit.  I never fixed it or named it. 

Here is a picture of someone else’s red Dodge Spirit:

After graduating from high school, I moved out to Utah with no car.  I walked everywhere I went.  When Barbara left on her mission, she left her black Nissan Sentra at our apartment, but she didn’t leave it for me to drive.  It was a stick shift which no one had ever taught me to drive and she let the registration and insurance lapse on it.  A boy in my ward took me to the BYU stadium parking lot and gave me a few lessons on how to drive stick in that car and I was terrible at it.  I may have learned enough to drive it over to my next apartment when I moved, but I never drove it around to the store or anywhere, so for all intensive purposes, I had no car.

The next car I got to drive was Zach’s brown station wagon (Belle) which he started leaving at my apartment after we were engaged.  I felt a new sense of freedom to be able to get places that were farther than my feet could walk.  I will let Zach write about all the cars we had together, since he will be much more detailed than I would be.

I think if I had to pick a car that was the most “me,” at this point it would be a van.  I’m just in the van stage of my life I guess.  I spend my days hauling around my own little hoard of adorable children all day.