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Shortly after exiting the bus this afternoon, I witnessed an interesting event.  A young man in a suit and a girl wearing a hoodie and yoga pants were walking down the street, and instead of crossing to the other side, the guy elbowed the girl to keep walking.  This prompted her to scream, “No!  I don’t want to go to your stupid car!”  I craned my neck to see what car they were talking about, but the only vehicle in sight was a new-looking Chevy something-or-other.

Now, Chevrolet would not be my first choice of American automaker, and—let’s face it—an American automaker would not be my first choice of manufacturer.  However, I would not be so offended by that car that I would scream about it in the middle of the road.

This got me thinking about the car my husband drove when we first started dating.  It was, undoubtedly, the absolute worst automobile I have ever encountered.

I met my husband, Tristan, at a friend’s birthday party, but I had to leave before he did and so I didn’t get to see what his car looked like.  We met up for coffee the next day and decided to hit the bar afterwards.  I’d parked my four-month-old Rabbit on the street outside the coffee shop, where it sat gleaming among other, lesser cars.  “Which one of these is yours?” I asked.  He looked uneasy and explained that he’d parked in the rear lot.

“You drive this?” were the first words out of my mouth when I first met the Kia.  It was made sometime in the nineties, before Kia made a car that lasted longer than 5,000 miles, and it looked as though it had never been serviced.  The paint was discolored in spots, scratched and/or peeling in others, and parts of the body were rapidly succumbing to rust.  It had one solid red side mirror and one two-tone black-and-gold side mirror, which was cracked.  He’d been letting people scratch their names into the trunk lid.

The noise the Kia made was appalling.  At first I couldn’t tell whether the engine was sick or the exhaust was full of holes—then I realized it was both.  When I inquired as to where he’d acquired such a marvelous automobile, Tristan responded that he’d bought it from a local college student for $300.

So it went.  I was always able to tell when Tris was on his way to my parents’ house—on a clear summer night you could open a window and hear the Kia coming from a couple miles away.  We were on our way to the theatre once when the brakes gave out and I had to deliver a crash-course on brakeless driving (something I am quite good at).  Over the course of a year, the Kia deteriorated into a state that required gallons of coolant to be stored in the backseat.  Every so often, you’d have to pull over, let the engine cool off and refill the coolant.  It took forever to get anywhere.

The Kia finally died one day when it was lent to my husband’s sister, who didn’t understand the directions for the coolant.  She simply restarted the car every time it overheated and stalled out, which resulted in the engine melting.  Tristan sold the car to a scrap yard for $200, which was about $150 more than it was actually worth—the guy who ran the yard felt sorry for him.

This says something about people and their cars.  Tristan is still bitter about the Kia, although he’s now driving something much better—namely, my Rabbit.  He’s learned how to drive properly, without the assistance of an automatic gearbox, and he particularly enjoys the bit where he puts his foot down and the car responds.  I can understand how he’s still not over the Kia, though.  I sometimes get behind the wheel of my first car, an aging pickup truck still parked in my parents’ driveway, and thoroughly enjoy it, even though it’s rubbish.

You can’t not be affected by your first car, just like you never forget your first love, except I think the car is more pleasant experience.  Your car isn’t going to leave you for your best friend or leave you the moment you go off the college.  It might break down repeatedly, it might need coolant every few miles, the brakes might go out occasionally.  My truck’s failed repeatedly, which is the reason I am so good at driving without brakes.  We’ve reached a point in human development where we forge bonds with inanimate objects—our phones, our computers—but none of them is quite as fun as the bond with our cars.