For the first time in my life, I have a brand new car. A 2005 Neon. Mineral gray. I'm a little intimidated by it since I've never had anything new before. I've always driven beater cars, so I never cared about parking spaces or dings or merging into people who won't move out of the way when they pass an onramp and have an empty passing lane right beside them and no possible right hand exit path for miles.
My previous car was a '91 Sundance and it was continuous trouble. It went through several complete transmission overhauls, had almost the entire underbody rebuilt out of donated parts from other cars, and once burned a line in the road from the street to my driveway when the tran fluid pan was accidentally sliced off. Then there was the time I didn't notice the temperature gauge pegging and kept on driving. I know it had plenty of miles on it, but I couldn't say for sure exactly how many since I drove it for several years without the odometer working. Dad towed it off sidestreets and out of parking lots more times than he'd like to remember.
So in this bright Clark-centric world, it's good to have a new car.
Of course, now I'm right in the Ironic Zone, where something terrible is bound to happen to it just because it's new. Most Ironic Zones happen specifically for newscasters - I was flipping past New Orleans disaster coverage and heard a reporter talk about a family whose house is now gone and they had just moved in last Thursday - but a car's Ironic Zone is a more personal affair. Since I've never had anything this expensive or this nice, I'm liable to fixate on it longer than most. Not so much as a car, because I'll never be a car head, but more as a really big gadget. I mean, I'm the guy who wipes down Wavebirds after a weekend party, who keeps his gaming cards in alphabetical order, and who never ever erases a memory card save. I'm already annoyed that my office doesn't have windows so I can keep an eye on it.
