It was 1995 and I was a Junior in High School. The day that I got my driver's license was shadowed only by the fact that I knew I had a car waiting for me at home... not a new car, not a pretty car, not a fast car... simply a car.
The "Zipper", as she became lovingly known, was a 1978 root-beer brown, four door with hatch back, Chevrolet Chevette with brown and yellow checked interior. It was given to my family by my aging great grandmother, and because it had been garaged for it's entire life, the "Zipper" was shinier than most cars on the road (to the detriment of someone who is trying to not be noticed in it, I soon found out), but the inside smelled faintly of "moth balls" and old people. The car was "loaned" to me by my mother, who didn't like to give anything away, and even though I wasn't wild about being seen in it, it was better than riding a school bus more than a half hour to and from school each morning.
The first day that I drove her to school is one that will be ingrained in my memory forever. The drive was nice, music blaring from the new stereo that my dad had put in for me two days earlier, and because I lived in a rural area of Central California, the streets were long, wide and open and I pushed that little Chevette up to at least 65. I timed things so that I would be a little late to school, and thus miss most of my classmates seeing me arrive. I parked a little away from the front gate and hurried to class, getting only a minor chastisement for being late. The day went by smoothly, and I planned my escape route as fully as I'd planned my arrival.
Hurrying out of my last class, so as to get in the car and on the road before too many people saw me or asked me for a ride, I rounded the corner to find, much to my horror, a group of people standing around the "Zipper" and pointing; some were laughing, while others were simply gasping. I walked slowly toward the crowd, head down, eyes on the ground... until I noticed the glass.
Someone had busted out the passenger's window, entered my car and proceeded to "jimmy" out the new stereo (which was one of those models that slid in all in one piece with a handle) and had bent the gear shift in the process. They had also stolen my leather jacket and a small wallet that was in the pocket, which contained recent class pictures of all of my friends (who had so kindly written messages on the back with my name) and a couple of bucks, but nothing more.
I couldn't say anything...I simply threw my stuff in the car through the broken window and went around to the driver's side, ready to jump in and speed off (if I could get the damned thing into gear), until I noticed that the street was littered with pictures...pictures of my friends, and people where picking them up and reading MY NAME off the back!
Terrified, mortified, incapacitated... all words that would have aptly described my current state of mind. Still, from somewhere deep within my fragile high school psyche, I managed to summon up the courage to throw up my head, walk the busy street gathering my pictures, calmly walk back to the car (dismissing the voices of concern and the snickers of laughter), get inside and pull slowly away... checking my mirrors and using my blinker, of course.
I drove the "Zipper" to a nearby gas station, and that's where I broke down crying! I called my dad, who calmly told me to drive carefully home. The very next day, he kept me out of school and we searched through four junk yards to find the "Zipper" a new passenger's window and he bought me a new stereo that had one of those fancy new "detachable" faces. I went back to school with my head held a little higher... and I never parked that far from the front gate again!
The "Zipper" spent another three years in my care... until I totaled her in a roll-over accident, but that's a different story! Despite my reservations in the beginning, the "Zipper" turned out to be a good little car, and my friends even learned to like her... as she was their only mode of transportation around town! I'll never forget that car...
