An Open Letter to my First Car
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Politics and Activism

An Open Letter to my First Car

You never think about just how important your first car is until it's gone.

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An Open Letter to my First Car
Photographer: Suzanne Koch

To my first car, a blue 1999 Honda Accord:

I just wanted to thank you for the three years we had together. You were already over a decade old when I first came to call you my own, but when I saw you sitting in my aunt's driveway, cleaned and polished up like you'd just rolled off the production line, you were the most beautiful machine I'd ever laid eyes on. It seemed impossible for me to feel any better than I did when I sat in your driver's seat, turned the key into the ignition and put you in drive for the first time as my own car. Believe me, I know I was lucky to get you like I did. My aunt just passed you down to me when she decided to get a new car. I didn't have to work a summer job to afford you, or be so presumptuous as to ask my parents to buy a car for my graduation present. I'd like to think that two summers of volunteer work at a summer camp certainly made my parents and aunt feel like I was worthy of owning you, though. And I'm so glad that they did.

I have so much to thank you for. You were the best bragging right a guy could ever have through my senior year of high school. You were my closest companion every day of my first paying summer job, and together we learned the anxiety of wondering whether or not that rattling sound coming from the engine was as serious as we feared. You carried me and all my junk from New York to Indiana for my freshman year of college. You kept running faithfully for me, even after we hit that patch of ice on the highway outside Fort Wayne and spun out into the grass between the lanes. Your steering wheel held my head up as I broke down and cried a few times from stress during sophomore year. You ferried me and my girlfriend without fail to countless dates, and I will always be grateful to you for never breaking down on any of them. I'm just sorry that you never got to see that girl become my fiancé.

Back and forth from Indiana to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and New York, on so many trips during those first two years of college, we covered so many miles together. You were my first stroke of independence as my own man, finally able to drive wherever I wanted as long as I had the directions and the gas to make it there. You were the first thing that was truly my own as an adult. I will never forget that. The places we went and the things we did together shaped me into the man I'm still becoming today.

It broke my heart when that mechanic lifted you up in his shop and showed me how your undercarriage was so seriously rusted. It crushed me when I heard that you probably wouldn't survive another trip back out to college. It was like I was watching a friend on their deathbed. There was nothing I could do to help you, after all, you had done for me. You were just too old.

So I said goodbye, as must be eventually said to all beloved things. But I will never forget you. No matter how many other cars I may own in my lifetime, you will always be the first, and in so many ways, the best. Thank you.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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