Flashback Friday: My First Car

Flashback Friday #1

How fun!  I'm excited to participate in this, because, frankly, I just love talking about myself.

This week's flashback revolves around our early driving experiences:

How and when did you learn to drive? Do you have any particular memories associated with getting your driver license? How old were you when you got your first car and what was it? Who paid for it?

My mom was one of those moms who let me drive on her lap on the way to school.  Back then, no one thought about how dangerous that was.  My favorite learning-to-drive experience was when my sis and I were taking driver's ed together and Mom was helping us learn to parallel park.  Look at this borrowed picture of  a 1986 Chevrolet Caprice Classic to get how extremely difficult this was.  I mean look at the size of the hood.  And the seat was broken so I couldn't see over the hood.  (Thankfully, we were taught and tested on a tiny Nissan Sentra.)

My mom thought it would be a good idea to use her shoes as place markers.  Let's just say they ended up with tire marks on them.  By my sis of course, not me.

For some reason I was obsessed with learning to drive a stick-shift.  So I thought it would be a good idea to borrow my dad's truck to learn.  I assured my mom (who didn't know how to drive a stick) that I could do it.  I managed to make it to the stop sign down the road before my mom insisted that we go home.  Ah good memories.

I was so excited to get my license.  My birthday fell on a Saturday, so I thought it would be okay for me to show up a day early in order to have my license on my actual birthday.  So I got all dressed up to look nice in my picture.  Unfortunately, the office refused to let me get it a day early and told me I had to come back on Monday.  I didn't bother to go all out the following Monday and just went after school to get my license.

My first car was a 1989 Suzuki Swift. (Again, a borrowed picture.  Not my actual car.  But it looked just like this.)

I bought this car with my own money from my own job, and was so proud of this car.  I even put a larger size tire on it, which earned it the nickname "pregnant rollerskate".  I eventually had to trade it in when I started driving the freeways more, but I hated to get rid of it.

So there you have it.  Go on over to Mocha with Linda to join in and link up!