Erin The Great

It’s that time of year again where I inhale, cross my fingers and hope beyond hope that my car passes safety and emissions.

For those who have no Idea what I’m talking about, the safety and emissions test is the test that your car goes through to be registered by the state, thus proclaiming it ‘street legal’.

I grew up in Oregon where you could register anything with wheels. As long as you could get it started, then registered it could become! One of the funniest things when I was a kid was being in the car and having my dad play ‘That’s my car’. Basically my dad would look at on coming traffic and say ‘Erin gets a ____ insert car here’. It was an awesome game that gave you a wide spectrum of cars. You received cars from the Mercedes, Lexus, and Mustang genre to the lower end models such as Novas and Gremlins.

The best part of this game was when my dad would start with one of us naming who got what car and then suddenly proclaim that someone got a ‘beater’. These cars were barely recognizable as cars, which is why they received the ‘beater’ status. My family would keep ‘beater’ counts as to who had how many ‘beaters’ and our ‘beater’ numbers were usually astronomical.

Being a ‘beater or POS’ car owner myself, I understand why we never up grade. Not once did the people back home think ‘oh man, I have about thirty things wrong with my car, I’d better go get those fixed so the state will let me drive my car’. I love my POS car! Granted, the windshield wipers don’t shut off, most of the seatbelts are broken, the windows don’t roll down, it has a very special ‘I reak like vinegar’ smell that I haven’t been able to locate, the AC is broken, and I’m just waiting until my car throws a rod when I’m cruising down the street, but my POS car Obie is the freaking love of my life!! How can I part with such a gem?

There is no way under this Green Earth that the state of Utah will register my car! This displeases me to epic proportions to think that I must part with my car! The thing that gets me is people look at my car and say ‘what a piece of crap’! No kidding Sherlock, but my car can hear you and you’re making him feel bad! Since when did people stop looking at things with a sentimental eye? I’m very aware that my car is a glorified POS but I shouldn’t have to get rid of it just because it’s barely street legal. It has character! I’ve learned that if you rub the dashboard, he goes faster when you need it, if you talk lovingly to him he’ll usually make it to a gas station. Obie provides entertainment to thousands by sporting the latest fashions in bumper stickers. I must say that it’ll be a tragic day indeed when my car finally dies. Hang in there buddy!