That crazy woman...

...you saw the other day, the one who honked at you when you came racing out of a parking garage in downtown Little Rock?

That was me, the proud owner of a nearly-paid-for Cavalier.

I've got just a few months to go, and then I'll lose that car payment. This has evoked both great euphoria and paranoia, as I'm now convinced that A.) Something expensive is going to break/fail/fall apart or B.) Some idiot like you, gabby-cell-phone-woman, will came flying out of a garage and hit me. (Put down the damn phone, lady. Clearly, you cannot multi-task.)

Hubs doesn't understand my joy/fear. Because, you see, in the seven years we've been together, the man has owned and driven a:

Jeep Wrangler
Chevy Silverado
Yukon
Dodge pickup
Ford Escape (not his choice, but he had to humor me in order to get something new)

I, on the other hand, have bought only two vehicles -- ever:

An Isuzu pickup, purchased my senior in college and driven for 10 years.
The Cavalier, going on five.

(If any of my old college friends are reading this, well, right now they're shaking their heads, murmuring to one another,"Oh my God. Remember that truck, the one with the stick shift and no power steering? She drove that for 10 YEARS?!")

My devotion to the Isuzu and Cavalier has alternately fascinated and horrified Hubs, who has been known to run out on his lunch hour and buy a new truck.

We started dating in September 2000, married in April 2001. So it took him awhile to figure out that the Isuzu's air conditioning hadn't worked for two years.

July in Arkansas proved revealing.

And so my poor little Isuzu, which had withstood a decade of travels -- from the backroads of West Texas to the logging roads of the Piney Woods -- and even a rather gory encounter with a flock of stray sheep (eight dead, after the Red-Rover-style collsion), lasted only a few months into our marriage.

Oh, how I loved that beat-up Isuzu.

And oh, how I loved the five years of no car payments.

Now, nearly six years later, I'm excitedly counting down the days 'til I mail off the last check for the Cavalier, even as I fret over all the what-ifs. My paranoia is well-founded.

You see, the sheep incident occurred just before I was due to pay off the Isuzu. Luckily, the insurance adjuster forgot to add in an $85 part, thereby sparing my truck. I even got a new paint job out of the deal because the Isuzu's original color no longer existed. The body shop guys laughed their asses off every time I talked to them, just because they couldn't believe they were actually fixing and repainting this thing.

(In case you're wondering -- that thing with the sheep happened right after a tornado. I was on assignment with a photographer (HE was driving) when we came upon a flock of sheep crossing a two-lane highway. Take a moment to imagine not one, but eight -- EIGHT! -- fluffy sheep bouncing off your hood. Oh, the carnage. Awful, I tell you, especially if you happened, as a child, to raise pet sheep: Holly, Dolly, Ellie and Sherman. But I digress...)

I drove that truck for another two years with an oil leak that required me to keep a permanent stash of Pennzoil on board -- until the day my Isuzu finally went dry and burned up the engine in downtown Houston.

No problem. I had the engine rebuilt just in time to drive the Isuzu to a new job in Arkansas.

And then I drove it for another two years before I started dating the man who made it his mission to get rid of the truck.

I am my father's daughter. He also clings to vehicles, a trait that has long infuriated my mother.

I still remember watching the blurred asphalt through several holes in the floorboard of his old Chevette.(Those holes first appeared when I was ... maybe a sixth-grader? And guess what? When I turned 15, I learned to drive a stick on that same Chevette.)

I also recall the day Dad finally got rid of our Mobile Traveler. I can still see him pacing the driveway, looking mournfully at the spot it once claimed. I'm quite certain that at the very same time, my mother was in the house turning cartwheels down the hallway.

My dad and I, however, both strongly believe that if it still works, you drive it, regardless of a lack of -- aesthetics...?

Hubs has talked for months of getting rid of the Cavalier, just so he will have a new truck for deer season. Won't happen. He did away with my Isuzu. He's not touching this one.

I will feel no pity, not even when I picture him cramming a dead buck into the back of a Ford Escape.