naturally, this means that next week, i will also say goodbye to my dear old friend, goldie the 4runner, aka the gold digger, aka goldschläger, aka goldie the magic dildo (don't think about that last one too much), who has outlasted everything as the final stronghold on my extremely fast and furious youth. the other day we decided that if goldie's walls could talk, they would probably scream, but the truth is, i've had that car since i was 23, and i am about to be 33 (fuckfuckfuck), so goldie has been around to witness all the stumbling i did when i was not a girl, not yet a woman. i prefer to think of these as my adult formulative years, and some of those stumbles are AWESOME.
since i bought her (all on my own in 2003), goldie's been my bottom bitch while i traversed the countryside, living in arkansas; the woodlands, texas (aka communist china); chicago; and finally, dear old space city, houston. in 10 years, i've put just 120,000 miles on goldie while simultaneously accumulating the following statistics.
goldie has transported me to a staggering ELEVEN places of employment, the highlight of which has to be my sports bar waitressing stint at a joint called fox & hound, where i slung beer buckets to finance my day job as a non-paid interior design intern. it's fairly bittersweet to think that the car i was driving when i didn't know what i was doing with my life is the car i'm driving now, when it seems everything has been figured out.
speaking of not having had it figured out, goldie's been chaperone to vehicular interludes with a disconcerting amount of mr. wrongs: 1 fiance (slash ex-fiance), 4 serious boyfriends (aka ex-boyfriends, aka assholes) and 11 quasi-boyfriends (goldie and i both knew they weren't ex-boyfriend material) all rode shotgun at some point before i found sugar bears. what a whore bag.
although i've only ever gotten one traffic ticket during the goldie years (failure to wear a seat belt), goldie and i have been involved in multiple accidents, one of which was car wreck with mario lopez, who did not have car insurance. also, he rear ended me, but i've never been able to say that i was rear-ended by mario lopez with a straight face. goldie has had her airbags replaced, a new front end at least three times that i can remember, a new back end (twice, i think), two entirely new sides and also two major window replacements, so i challenge you to find an original component of her that isn't the roof. one accident, unfortunately, caused permanent damage to her cassette player, which means we've been listening to tape 5 of lalita tademy's cane river for over six years. goldie and i had some pretty killer road trips listening to books on tape.
so farewell to goldie. you were the hi ho silver (emphasis on the hoe part) to my lone ranger, and i never had to worry about spilling an entire cup of coffee in your passenger seat, BECAUSE YOUR UPHOLSTERY IS THE PERFECT SHADE OF SPILLED COFFEE STAINS.
and you don't find a car like that every day.
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| chicago circa 2005. this is really the best i can do as far as photos of myself and the golddigger. goldie has also seen me through HUNDREDS of hair color choices. |
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| i can't find any other photos that contain both me + goldie, so i submit this one as evidence that i bought her in arkansas, had illinois plates, am a licensed scuba diver and a proud member of delta theta. also, the man with the key map admiring his rear-end job is mario lopez. |
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| this is a totally different accident. |
