True Story:  I had a 1993 Toyota Carolla named Caroll. That ol ‘ girl was like a sister to me.

I think I mentioned that I was a little wild in my younger daze. If I am remembering this correctly, I was grounded from 8th grade until I graduated high school.

True Story:  My Mom grounded me for a party that occurred while I was out of town.

I went to visit my Dad at the beach for the weekend when I was in High School. My best buds got busted for attending a party while I was gone. When I came home my Mom said, “You’re Grounded”. (Her favorite words)

Me:  What? Why?

Mom:  A & P were at a party this weekend.

Me:  So? I wasn’t there.

Mom:  If you’d have been here, you would have been the Ring Leader (Say this with LOTS of anger). Ring Leader  was another term of endearment I became accustomed to.

So, you can see how the car provided for me when I turned 16, was taken away and sold within 2 months of my birthday.

By the time I was a Senior the need for my younger sisters to have transportation over-rode my continual need to be stranded without a car as punishment, and my Mom bought me a car. That would be Carol.

Carol’s Life:

1.  Right off the bat I decided I better go ahead and put a cigarette burn on her seat, so as not to be upset when it inevitably would happen. This made sense to me at the time.

2.  After a party one night, I decided I better not drive home. So, I asked my really responsible, male friend G to drive me home. He wrecks on the way home, ripping the whole rear bumper off. His parents owned a body shop but would not fix the car.

3.  At a party one night in High School I let a friend borrow it to take someone home, or buy cigarettes. I can’t remember the exact reason. It came back wrecked. Really wrecked, like the whole side panel. My friend had no explanation for this.

Me:  What happened?

A:  What are you talking about?

As far as I know, this issue has never been resolved.

At this point Carol is starting to look really good, or bad. However you want to look at it.

4.  When I went off to the University of Alabama my Mom decided I shouldn’t be allowed to take my car, so Caroll stayed at home for a while.

My Dad let me drive Verbena while I was at school. Verbena is, I should probably say, was, a 1987 red Chevy Blazer with a toothpick keeping the power button on on the radio and not much else working. Verbena is a WHOLE nother blog for another day.

I’ll tell you this much about her now. I got so many parking tickets my freshman year at Alabama they put a boot on Verbena. The school called my dad and wanted some crazy amount of money for the parking tickets to release the boot on the blazer.

My Dad to the man on the phone:  No, what you need Son, is a Title.

He mailed Verbena’s title to the school and that was that.

5.  Eventually my Mom decided to let me have Caroll back. Possibly a mistake, but I had to get around somehow.

My sophomore year at U of A I lived in a house with 4 other girls. On my 20th birthday we decided to have a Kegger. Whoo Hoo! Apparently someone decided to jump on Caroll’s roof and throw the keg on top of her in celebration of my reaching 2 decades old. Now, the poor ol’ girl had a dented roof.

6. While in T-town she also had some practical jokes played on her, or me???

At one point a “friend” tied a feminine hygiene product around her antenna. It rained shortly there after, causing the “product” to expand into a lovely white flag.

Another “really good friend” put a dead bird under the driver’s seat. I believe I mentioned that I can’t smell, right? You guessed it, I didn’t know it was there until my friend Z got in the car one day and had to ride with his head hanging out the window.

True Story:  I went to Montana for 3 months and stayed 6 years.

7.  My best bud was going out to Big Sky, MT, for the summer with her boyfriend. I decided this was something I should do as well.

She went to Ole Miss and suggested I come meet them there in Oxford. Made sense to me. So, I drove to Oxford, MS, parked Caroll in the parking lot of a very nice apartment complex and jumped in my friend’s car to head to Montana.

Well, as the end of summer rolled around, I decided to stay in Big Sky. It felt more like “home” at that point. I didn’t really think much about Caroll baking in the Mississippi sun so far away.

I guess about 6 months after I was gone, someone called my Mom to see what we were going to do about this Carolla sitting in the parking lot in Oxford. Poor girl, the already fabulous paint job was now faded and chipped.

8.  She made at least 10 trips from Montana to Alabama and back over the 6 years I was there.

9.  She was pulled out of countless snowbanks and drove me to and from Montana State University and my bartending jobs in Big Sky when I lived on no sleep, diet cokes and cigarettes.

10.  When I graduated from college I sold her to my boyfriend, Pump, for $1,000. My Mom was giving me her Miata for graduation when I got home. Will she never learn???

11.  After Montana came California and a short stint in North Dakota, where through tears Pump and I sold her to a 16-year-old for $800. She had about a 1000 miles on her and a lot of memories.

True Story:   I bet she’s still out there running up and down the roads. This might be her…