The DW and I often get asked by some of you how we manage to get as much done as what we do – the simple answer: there’s so much to do it’s pretty easy to just skim off the top. There’s so much more we just don’t get done. For example, while I was in college I stumbled upon a 1966 Mustang. It was in fair shape and I thought it would be a great project for my free time so I bought it. That was over 13 years ago and I still haven’t touched the car. I’ve been told repeatedly by my dad that “you always have time to do what you make time to do.” I never made time to work on the car, so it wasn’t that hard of a decision when I listed it for sale last week. The decision was reaffirmed when Potato Boy walked past the computer while I was uploading a picture of the car to a For Sale website and stopped to ask “Who’s old car is that?”

After I explained to him that it was a car I purchased long before the DW and I were ever married he was a little curious what else I used to drive. I had to stop and think for a moment before I came up with this:

There was my first car – an ’89 Pontiac Sunbird with 120,000 miles that I got in ’95 or ’96 with the help of my parents. It had a salvaged title and had been touched up so many times that when I had the rust on the doors repaired the paint shop identified 5 different shades of maroon on the car when trying to formulate a color match. It would stall and refuse to start for 20 seconds each time I’d come to a stop sign on an off ramp, but it got me to prom, graduation, and my first part time job while in college – the job where I first met the DW. I put two tires and 40,000 miles on that car before selling it for $500 more than I paid for it.

Then there was a ’98 Caviler I bought new. It’s sounds outrageous now, but at the time I got a great interest rate on the loan – 7.44%. I’d put almost 150,000 miles on the car driving it through college, law school, and my first post-college job. It was also the car the DW and I were sitting in when I broke up with the her shortly before we, and the car, were searched by police (that’s a story for a different day). I also managed to “total” it twice. The first time by hitting a 10 point buck while going 65 down a four lane highway late one night returning to law school after a weekend at home. The buck was so big the deputy needed help dragging it off the road. It was put back together and I’d drive it another 50,000 miles before the night my parents dropped me off at the dealership to pick up a new car and were driving the Caviler home when they hit a deer. This time I took the check and let the insurance company have the car. I would ultimately replace the Caviler with another Caviler I found used that the DW and I drove until Lulu was born and we didn’t fit in it anymore.

The new car I was picking up the night the Caviler was totaled the second time was an ’06 Mustang GT. Ford had recently changed the body style and due to demand I had to wait three months before the car I wanted was available. This was the fun car to drive – a big V8 with a manual transmission. Even a cop waved at me once – and no, I wasn’t speeding (that time). This was the car I drove when I picked up the DW for our “second” first date 7 years after we had parted ways in college. She would later put me in my place with “Oh, this is a Mustang? I hadn’t noticed.” We managed to squeeze Potato Boy and Sissy’s car seats in back for my first trip to meet the DW’s family. And when the time came, it was the car we traded in on our first family car – and not without issue of course. The sales rep continued to make advances at the DW until he realized her profession and then started to ask her for business favors for his girlfriend. (The sales rep later left me a voice mail asking why I gave him such a poor customer satisfaction review. The fact he had to ask means it wasn’t worth explaining.)

After all of that, Potato Boy asked me “So why are you selling the old Mustang?” I told him that there are other things I’d rather do with him and the rest of the family and didn’t want the money tied up in something I wasn’t going to work on. That maybe the truth, but maybe the simple answer is that, compared to the other cars I’ve owned, there’s just no story there.