Saturn

I LOVE MY VUE

I love my Vue. Plain and simple. I’ve always been a practical person. The first car I’ve ever wanted was a blue four-door car. Blue … because that’s my favorite color. Four doors because I hate climbing in and out of the backseat of a two-door car. I think my sisters dreamed of having something sporty and flashy … I think Krissy wanted a Lamborghini at one point in her life … Becky, I can’t remember what she wanted. Anyway, I wanted a blue four-door car … that’s all I wanted. My first car that I bought myself was a blue 1988 Plymouth Sundance with four doors.

I believe I named that car Evy … in all honesty, she was a little crappy car that got me around the great city of Winona. I decorated the back bumper with clever stickers, such as “Mean People Suck.” Toward the end of her life, when I should’ve known better, I know I dropped a ton of money to keep her around a little longer. My next car was a 1996 strawberry red (read: pink) Dodge Neon … it wouldn’t have been bad except that my parents had bought a similar car years earlier. Strawberry pink. Four doors. The only difference was mine had a gray stripe running across the doors … to make it look sporty or something.

I can’t remember what I named the Neon … no, I do remember. I named her Neo, because that was about the time “The Matrix” (starring Keanu Reeves … I love you!) was one of my favorite movies. Just take away the last n in Neon, and you have Neo. Brilliant. Once again, Neo was a good car until she started dying on me. Oh, the fond memories of me and Neo … I remember heading to Plainview, Minn., to visit my parents and Neo decided to blow a gasket while chugging up a steep hill in the middle of Minnesota farmland. This was before I owned a cell phone, and so I walked to the nearest farm to ask for help.

My dad thought I was crazy to sell Neo for $100 to my then-neighbors (two young 20-something women). We were nice to each other whenever we saw each other outside of the apartment complex. We shared a love for cats … not to mention, they only had one crappy car between the two of them. I believe their car was even crappier than Neo, who was filled with many problems at the time (broken odometer the biggest problem I can think of at the moment). To me, helping my neighbors was more important than trying to get $400 for Neo. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

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