From Ragged Top to Riches

Back a hundred and fifty years ago, when I worked for DeKalb County, and the law was passed that young drivers going 24 or more miles per hour lost their licenses, I noticed a trend.

Every single one of thee super duper speedy quick teenagers drove a nicer car than I did. At the time (late '90s, early 2000s), I drove a 1994 champagne colored Geo Prizm. Manual transmission. Yeah. Sexy. You know you're jealous. I loved that car, and might actually still be driving it if a guy who thought dialing his wife was more important than actually looking out of the front windshield and totalled my car for me while I was six months pregnant in 2001. 

Don't worry, I was fine, in fact, whatever was wrong with my back suddenly was no longer wrong with my back. The knucklehead apparently properly re-adjusted my spine. But that's a story for another day.

I didn't own a car of my own until I was 21 and I moved to the Atlanta area. In college I just rode a bike, walked, took the bus or bummed a ride. In high school, I lived in a place that had public transportation that took you pretty much anywhere you wanted to go. Plus, the landscape was completely flat, so you could ride a bicycle for miles without breaking too much of a sweat.

When I was at home with my parents, there was a car that I could usually use. It was a sparkly green 1974 Dodge Swinger, with a white vinyl hardtop. Well, the hardtop used to be white. At this point it was sparse and gray and curled up in flakes that flapped in the breeze like an old man's hair while he drives his mid-life-crisis convertible. The green sparkly vinyl that covered the bench seats was mostly gone. We used old sheets to cover the foam to protect our clothes from getting foam balls all over them. 

Since we lived near the beach, anything with trace elements of metal rusted to dust almost instantly. Therefore, the metal floorboards were all but non-existent, so you could watch the road go by as you drove. We covered the floor with leftover vinyl sheets from when we redid the kitchen. And that car started every time I asked it to and I could drive five of my friends wherever we wanted to go (so long as we didn't want to drive more than 55 - what torque that car had! 0-60 in three and a half hours!

The car I bought when I was 21 was my grandfather's cast-off 1985 Oldsmobile Delta 88. That thing was like two plush sofas on wheels. It got about three miles to the gallon. The hood was so enormous that if I drove up a hill with more than a 20 degree incline, it blocked the windshield and I coudn't see anything. 

I drove that car until the transmission took a dive. Then I bought the aforementioned Geo. It was not long after I graduated from law school. I was so proud of that car. It was shiny new and mine, all mine. I researched Consumer Reports, paid for the whole thing, negotiated with the salesman, insured it, financed it, and drove it all by myself. It was truly a day of mourning the day it got irretrievably smushed. I still get misty eyed just thinking about that car. By that time I was married and pregnant, so we exchanged it for a 2001 Toyota Sienna minivan which we still own and drive to this day.  

Which brings me back to one in a long series of my fist shaking, fuddy duddy rants about kids these days. As I said, these kids driving 79 or more miles per hour all drove cars nicer than my several years old Geo Prizm. Who was giving these kids brand new BMWs or even Hondas? Well, duh. Their parents.

My kids aren't yet of driving age, but a number of my friends have children who drive and when I handle divorces, very often we deal with who is going to pay for the children's car payments. 

I know it is easy for me to sit up here looking at the view from my high horse when I’m not there yet, but, excuse me? Who is going to pay for the children's car payments? I know that I appear to be in a tiny minority of people who have this opinion, and I know this will likely make a great number of my friends angry, and I hereby give everyone reading this the right to throw this in my face in five years if/when I cave and buy my son a car because I really want him to have side curtain air bags, but why are parents obligated to finance a vehicle for their children? Are we not in enough debt just buying them food and sneakers? Do our children not deserve the pride that comes from working for and achieving a goal? 

We complain about a generation that feels like it is entitled to everything it desires at the same time we work overtime and go into debt to hand over a vehicle to someone who hasn't done anything to earn it but simply exist. And let's just say that your kid is a football star or busy with the theater and doesn't have time to get a job and maintain grades. And you really really really need your kid to drive himself to practice. So why can't you buy whatever 2013s equivalent of a reliable but rusted fifteen year old Dodge Swinger is?

Maybe I'm just jealous of these kids, since I had to work for what I had. Then again, maybe I'm just grateful my parents made me do for myself, and I fear for the future in the hands of people who think owning a car they won't be able to afford on their own for years is as much a necessary and inevitable part of growing up as body hair and acne. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go to work so I can afford my car payments for my three-year-old Honda.