When you're thinking about your life, think about your car.
We often take our cars for granted. They get us from A to B, sure enough, and we spend inestimable hours in them over a lifetime: strapped into car seats as youngsters, learning to drive in our teens with a white-knuckled parent or pale-faced driving instructor beside us, and then when we're old, the moment we're told 'you can't drive any more' - how does that loss of independence feel?
Our cars, trucks, motorbikes, bicycles - any form of daily transportation we use - play important roles in our life stories.
Think about the first car you ever owned - so proud were you! Maybe your parents helped you buy it, or they gave it to you, or you saved every penny until you could afford to make this four-wheeled fantasy a reality. Did that first car have a peculiar characteristic? Did it always have a pull to the left, in spite of multiple visits for alignment?
Driving gave you independence. Having a car enabled you to get out into the world, go places, see things, meet people, get to work, hold down a job, take your girlfriend out - maybe the one who eventually became your wife?
While that car gave you freedom and joy, it also came with cost, trials and tribulations: you had to buy petrol to make it go; when it broke down, as they inevitably do and often at the worst possible moment, did you have the money to foot the bill?
'The adventure begins when something goes wrong' and nothing could be truer when a car breaks down: were you on a deserted country back road after midnight when the tyre went flat and you had no spare, or perhaps on a hot desert road and the radiator blew and you had no water to fill it? Maybe you had an accident in your car - a minor fender-bender or one that changed your life - and maybe someone else's - irrevocably.
I've always been fond of my cars. They've all had different personalities and quirks, particularly the used ones that came with a ready-made personality shaped by someone else - sometimes you get along with that persona, sometimes not. The first car I owned was a used Datsun 510 called Chickadee that I bought in Seattle and drove all the way to Fernandina Beach, Florida - I've written about that brave little adventurer in a previous blog. I've had only two new cars in my life that came to me with that new-car smell and shine. One was a little pickup truck that I never formed much of an attachment for (we were living in the country at the time and bought it because it was handy to have), and the other is my red Toyota Corolla that I still own, one that's been with me since about 1995 or so.
I cannot bear to part with it. I love it so. We've had plenty of adventures, Car and I, have traveled many of New Zealand's most hair-raising roads together, kicking up dust and flying over potholes and flood-water-gouged ditches. I've lifted that hatchback to load in firewood, boxes, building materials, people, my drums and heaven knows what-all else. It has about 280,000km on the clock now, is treated to an annual service each year, has a blow-your-ears-out sound system and doesn't give me a lick of trouble.
It gets me home late at night in a way that is gallant and noble: 'I will get you home safely Miss Jane, don't you worry.' It is never petulant - it starts up every time. Like a genteel older person, it keeps on going despite the aches and pains its 280,000 kms no doubt cause. It never kicks up rough and complains.
I could write a book about my experiences with cars - the ones I grew up with in our family, the ones I have owned, the places these vehicles have taken me.
What can you say about your wheeled pride and joy?