I Shouldn't Own a Car

I like to think, in most ways, I have my life pretty together. I’m responsible, I follow daily schedules and routines, and I get good grades. But there’s one life skill that stands out as needing work. I am very bad with cars. It’s not even that bad of a driver (I’m definitely not destined for trucking but my friends feel safe enough riding around with me), I’m just bad at being a car owner.

I have been pulled over, been rear-ended, rear-ended someone, popped a tire, gotten multiple parking tickets, lost my driver’s license twice, and locked myself out of my car twice, among other minor incidents. I also have very little interest in cars, so I don’t have the willpower to improve my car care. I think that it is best if I don’t ever own a car. Just another reason I should move to a big, walkable city.

Here is a collection of notable stories of my car troubles over my short few years of being old enough to own one. I imagine if I ever write a memoir, this will be a chapter, and hopefully, it won’t get much longer than what I already have here.

When I got pulled over

It was only a couple of months after I had gotten my driver’s license. I was driving home around 9:15 p.m. after a LONG day of 11 hours of dance. About five minutes after leaving the studio, I realized (thanks to someone flashing their lights at me, I probably would’ve never noticed on my own) that my lights weren’t on. Should be a simple fix of turning on my lights so I could drive the rest of the way home safely. Well, I didn’t know how to turn on my lights.

After fidgeting with the knob that I thought should turn them on for a couple of minutes, I decided I would just have to hold the knob that turned on my high beams forward for the rest of my drive. Aside from blinding the cars driving past me, this worked for a few minutes until I drove past a cop and accidentally flashed my high beams at them multiple times. Immediately I see their red and blue siren following me and I pull over into an elementary school parking lot.

As I said, this was an exhausting day and all I wanted was to go home, eat my late dinner, and go to sleep before I had to wake up for 10 a.m. dance again the next day. When two cops showed up at my window instead of just one as I had expected, that was my final straw. I cried to them explaining that I didn’t know how to turn my lights on.

In my defense, the cops couldn’t figure out my lights right away either. It turned out they were over to the left on a wheel instead of their typical location as in most cars. I had accidentally shifted it from auto when I had cleaned my car the day before for the first time since getting it. I left with just a warning but had nightmares about the incident all night.

The double whammy

This is the most traumatic story of the three.

I was going to finally get my car from my friend’s parking garage. I had gotten a two-day pass to park at her garage instead of out in an open-air parking lot for the weekend because a hurricane was coming. At this point it had been three or four days since I parked there, so I knew my pass had expired. The issue was that I couldn’t move my car when I was supposed to because my temporary license plate had blown off in the storm and I couldn’t drive my car without a license plate. Now that I had my permanent license plate ready to put on my car, it was time to check if I had been towed. After seeing from the passenger side that my car was still there, my friend and I celebrated.

I should have known better from my past luck with cars than to get too excited. As I came around to the driver's side, I saw that my car had been booted. Fifteen minutes later, I paid the $85 to have the towing company unboot my car and finally, I was on my way to an important meeting I was already running late for.

When I say less than two minutes later, I mean it. The very first stop light I came to after turning left out of the parking garage, I rear-ended someone. I was lucky that he was the sweetest old man and didn’t get angry because I was already angry enough with my own stupidity and I couldn’t have taken his wrath too. Needless to say, I missed my meeting and left my car with the front bumper indented and the hood slightly popped for months. I’ll admit that this one was a bad driver moment.

When I popped my tire

Right before driving from Gainesville to Miami, a tire light came on in my car. I had never filled up my tires with air before so I brought my car-guy friend to help me. My tires were supposed to be filled to 44 PSI. My tire was at 21 PSI when we got to the gas station.

We were able to get my tires filled up, but my friend also mentioned that I should probably get my tires replaced soon since the tread was looking worn down. There were no lights left on on my dashboard so I shrugged off his comment and made the drive first to Miami, then from Miami to Virginia.

A couple days after arriving home, it was raining and I noticed I had very little control of my car. I drove very slowly on the short drive to my house. As soon as I got home, I told my mom and she went outside to check my tires. She literally gasped when she saw them with absolutely zero tread left. I was driving on perfectly smooth wheels. The next day we took my car to get all four tires replaced.

THE VERY NEXT DAY I POPPED MY TIRE. I was driving on the highway when I heard a loud noise and lost control of my car. I had hit a curb earlier that day but, honestly, I have hit many curbs in my driving career and thought nothing of it. Apparently, that was enough to puncture the tire and my tire was replaced again that day. I visited the wonderful people of Goodyear Tires four times in four consecutive days.

It’s important to know your strengths and weaknesses, but I’m at least happy that this weakness provides such comedic and roastworthy content to my friends. Like I always say, I’m a feminist, but if anyone ever offers to drive me around, I will never protest.