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In high school I drove a Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo. It was black. It was NOT 4 wheel drive. It and I had many adventures together. Most of them involve it being a steaming pile and trying to kill and embarrass me. When it turned 100 (aka hit 100,000 miles) I celebrated by doing 100 mph on the highway. The car was shaking the entire way. It stopped accelerating at 95 and I had to remove my foot from the accelerator and slam on the gas again to get it to boost up to 100 for the key moment. That is basically the only good memory I have while driving that car.

My car had a nasty habit of dying on me. Just literally, shut off while I was driving. Besides being highly inconvenient, it was pretty dangerous since I had no acceleration, no power steering, or no power brakes. Which is awesome when it happens while doing 65 on the freeway. With a semi behind you. And a semi next to you. And having to get in the right hand lane in order to get in an emergency lane.

I hit the flashers and begin to wrestle my steering wheel to the right. It was like the engine shutting had installed the Club on my steering wheel. "Fuck" I thought. "Fuck" I yelled. The semi behind me got quite large in my rearview mirror. The semi next to me was past me ... a whole opened for me to fight my car into ... before a garbage truck ran me over. I closed my eyes and hoped for the best and somehow made it safely to the side of the road.

Three minutes later my car started up with no problems. Bastard.

My mom and I traded cars for the next few months. She traveled much shorter distance than me every day, so it was deemed safer. Also, she took it to be fixed. They could not figure out what was wrong, let alone fix it. After a few months of not breaking down again, I retook my car. I had began to dislike my mom's car when I found out I had been transporting alcohol in the back of her CRV to school everyday. That could have gone poorly.

So I get my car back. Being an idiot I forgot to buy gas ... or so I thought. The car died again. Optimistically I blamed the gas levels. I was downtown. I got gas and tried to turn the car on. No luck. Wonderful. Eventually it started and I headed home.

Like the idiot I clearly am, I accidentally took the wrong highway and headed across the river to Indiana. My car, like most rational creatures, evidently hates Indiana and refused to enter the state. It died in the middle lane of the bridge.... in heavy traffic. I couldn't even change lanes. I just sat in the middle of that bridge.

My piece of car started back up in five minutes and I made it home. Needless to say, when it came time to take a car to college we decided to go in a different direction. The next beaut decided it liked having a key in the ignition so much it would never let go. This is why I love cars. They always make perfect sense.

Side story of the Jeep being a shitty non-4 wheel drive. One day our parking lot at school was basically snowed in. People got into it in the morning by pulling through open spots. Eventually there was no exit. Sadly I had to leave early to go to the doctor. I thought to myself "I have a Jeep, I can go over the two feet of snow blocking the exit." Well ... no I technically could not. "Fuck" I thought. The construction workers decided to harass me as I walked into school. Kids in their classrooms mocked me incessantly.

The good news is, our disciplinarian came out and dug me out. Refused to let me help actually. Which was nice of him. I finally got out of the parking lot one minute before school ended.