Selling a car is like saying goodbye to an old friend. Granted, some cars haven’t been very good friends – gas guzzling, sticky transmissions, a tendency to pull left into oncoming traffic – but our car had been exemplary, taking us back and forth across the country in carefree comfort. It had seen nine states and outlived three sets of luggage. It had been a trooper. Still, it was time for our old friend to move on.
We made the call, hammered out a price and retrieved the title from the safety deposit box. The only thing left was to clear out our personal effects.
This was no small task. Like I said, we’d done a lot of living in that car. Through all those miles, we’d shared doughnuts and French fries, solved all the world’s problems and sung along with our entire collection of Beatles albums.
Over the years, we had equipped our baby with all of our car trip essentials. In the center seat console, I kept a full box of tissues, a notebook, a pen (Why didn’t we write those world problem solutions down?), and a fistful of lens wipes to clean Harold’s glasses when the smudges made him twitchy. Harold also required Lifesavers and toothpicks and a phone charger that plugged into the old cigarette lighter. I wanted gum and a package of peanut butter crackers in case I became woozy before the rest stop. I gathered everything into a car-transfer box.
In the door side pockets, there were napkins and straws, a baggie of coupons (some still unexpired), and a paper map for those times when MapQuest hadn’t figured in a construction detour.
The glove compartment held no gloves, but there were my nifty car insurance/registration folder, two partially used gas cards, a roll of quarters, two bottles of hand sanitizer and one of those gizmos that can cut through the seat belt strap or break the window should the car careen off a bridge into the water below. The only thing I left was the owner’s manual, a large, unwieldy book that apparently was written with no thought that anyone would actually use it.
That was the stuff I knew about. The real eye opener came when I cleaned out the back seat pockets, the place accessible only to my grandchildren. I found two wadded up coloring pages from sit-down restaurants and counted myself lucky the kids had not thrown in the crayons, which most certainly would have fused the pocket shut in the summertime heat. There were broken Happy Meal toys, a Chuck E. Cheese lizard that cost us 150 points and one Bubble Guppies sock we had given up on six months ago. Under the seats, I found coupons from a store that no longer existed and a Starbucks card that I figured I’d lost at the mall. Below that, it was a sea of stray Goldfish crackers and Teddy Grahams. Everything, even the sock, went in the trash.
From the trunk, I took out my emergency water, emergency first aid kit and emergency space blanket, thankful that we never had to use them. The spare tire never saw the light of day either, but I assume it’s still in there somewhere.
And that was it. So, goodbye faithful friend. I wish you and your new owner many happy travels. If we cross paths in the grocery store parking lot, I may absent-mindedly try the handle a time or two, but when I realize there’s not a Beatles CD on the console, I’ll remember that we’ve both moved on.
