Friday Favorites... beep beep

Took Bean to see Cars this afternoon... seriously funny. Really.

Car-inspired Friday Favorites...

Favorite car - I used to have a Mazda 626. It was small and zippy and could go 300 miles on it's little, weensy 10 gallon tank. I had that car when gas was still around a dollar a gallon - remember those days? I long for that car as I stand next to my SUV, waiting the thirty minutes/$60 it takes to fill the tank. I long for that car as I search for a parking space that is open (meaning there is no car in it) and open (meaning there is enough space on either side of it). (Sigh). A Ford truck ate my Mazda. Chomp.

Favorite personalized tags - my dad has a muscle car with the tag "PINCHME" and I saw an old Chevy Truck this morning that said "OLDNSLO" (My dad ought to get a new one that says "NOTSLOW"). There was "EARGASM," which I never quite understood and a cosmotologist I knew had "CHEVEUX."

Favorite car accident - I know that sounds odd. My friend Melissa used to be a terrible driver. Really, she was a menace on the road. She was a tailgater, she drove way too fast and she didn't pay attention to the road. She would also get distracted if you talked to her while she drove and forget where you were going a lot. She scared me. I used to give her a LOT of crap about her driving. Then one afternoon we were both on campus. It was really cold and icy and teachers were canceling classes and sending everyone home. I ended up behind her in the parking lot - which was odd because we didn't have any classes together. This was in the days before cell phones so I didn't even know that she was on campus. She noticed me behind her and waved and I waved back and we were both very happy and then I slid and plowed right into the back of her car. I wasn't going very fast so there was no damage but it was so funny... imagine that you are a witness to this... it's cold and snowy and yucky outside and then you see a little Mazda run right into a little Ford Escort. You might expect that the drivers would get out of the car and look at the damage and exchange information. Or you might expect that the drivers will either get out of the car and scream and carry on as they do sometimes. What you would not expect is that the two drivers would get out of their cars, run toward each other laughing, hug, look at the lack of damage, laugh some more, get back into their cars and drive away. (I took her to lunch and we never spoke of bad driving again).

Car accident that changed the course of my life - I dated the same guy from the time I was 15 until I was 19. We broke up for several reasons but I think boredom had a lot to do with it. I was driving the Mazda and got crunched by a big truck. The car got hit just about a half an inch away from the driver's side door. It spun around and ended up in the middle of someone's front yard. My head hit the side window, bounced to the right and went through the window. I had glass in my hair, ears, nose, bra, shoes... I was (literally) around the corner from my house (such a statistic) so we walked to my house to call the police. My mom was home and she walked back to the accident site with me. She saw the car and had to sit down - she said she couldn't believe I walked away from it and she was glad she saw me before she saw the car. Here's the life-altering part: the date was what would have been my 5-year anniversary and even though I was sort of seeing someone else the only person I called was my ex-boyfriend. He came over with Chinese food and some videos and we were together for another couple of years. The guy I was sort of seeing was (as it turns out) a huge alcoholic and apparently has a pretty nasty temper.

Some long-winded favorites today... that'll do, pig.