Tales Of The Camaro

(I have been thinking a lot about cars and driving now that I got a car I remembered some crazy adventures I had in my various vehicles. So I thought I'd write about my first car, a 1986 black Camaro.)

My leg was broken, but healing inside the cast I wore like a big advertisement for how dorky I felt I was; crutches were a sign of weakness, but here I was walking...crutching really...around a used car lot with my Mom on a rainy Saturday afternoon. We had looked at some junkers and some lame rides, aiming for a price range rather than a model or make of car. We kept passing a black Camaro, but it was not something my Mom was going to allow me to own. We were searching for responsible cars, full of safety features and slow acceleration, probably in some drab color that would make me a better, albeit boring as hell, driver. Finally I asked the salesman about the Camaro. He grabbed the keys and I slid inside as best I could manage with the stupid crutches and the leg of white rigidity. It felt cool, it felt GREAT, it was the car. Even my Mom knew it...or else she was psychologically fatigued from the rain, the saleman's rhetoric, and the stress of buying her firstborn a car which would surely lead to future problems (which of course it did).
We went into the salesman's office and did a bunch of math on paper which was very dull but represented the next two years of my financial future and finally my Mom gave in and signed the papers. Oh joy! I was so proud and excited as she drove my new cool car home, which I was unable to do because of my cast being on my right leg, the accelerator/brake pedal leg, so I just sat in the passenger seat and smiled all the way back to the house. My brother heard the car pull up and ran outside exclaiming, "MOM! I can't believe you bought him a Camaro!" I guess my brother, knowing that he was doomed to ride with me, was scared for his life. Rightfully so.
It only took about a week before I took the car out. I couldn't stand knowing that my new car was sitting in the driveway but I wasn't able to take it anywhere. Torture! I finally eased it around the neighborhood streets to see how my cast would work and if I could manage driving it. I could drive it but it required concentration because I pushed with my thigh, not with my ankle, since my leg was stuck in an L position. Honestly I was nervous with my handicap because driving was still so new to me and because I really didn't want to hit something (or someone!) and ruin my new car.
I drove to school on a Friday, cautious but completely "cool", and showed off the car to all the envious friends that couldn't afford an automobile yet. Nevermind my crutches, I now had a social trophy. And a date that night as well.
I picked her up at her house, met her folks, reassured them of my good intentions and safe driving record (which wasn't a lie, I had safely driven a whole two trips--to and from school), and we were off. I dressed in my preppy clothes with my hair swooped in a cool way, not too many zits, and my cast covered with some new baggy pants from the Gap. I had vacuumed the car and put a Smiths tape in the cassette player, fast-forwarded to the best depressing song on the album. She climbed into the Camaro and we were off to cruise the mostly empty streets of my town, reveling in freedom and painfully supressed hormonal urges.
We drove around for a while and eventually ended up at the high school, which is where everyone went to cruise because our town was boring as hell. A couple of cars were parked in dark corners as we slowly trolled through the parking lot.
Suddenly a truck bore down on my car, swerving and riding my tail with their headlights on bright. I sped up and turned right into the bus lane. The truck chased me. I mashed the gas and desperately tried to outrun it, but saw up ahead that the bus lane made a U-turn and came back down the road I was on with a thin grass median separating the lanes. I roared toward the U-turn and went to pull my foot off the gas and apply it to the brakes but my cast was stuck, trapped by the backside of the brake pedal which forced the accelerator to remain at a heavy throttle!
The turn came fast and I grabbed the steering wheel with all my adolescent fear and turned it hard left. The car squealed all four tires as it slid around the turn, clearly going waaaay too fast, and we, me the cast-leg dork driver and my noticeably panicked first and last date passenger, clung to our seats for dear life. We did, however, somehow manage to slide around the turn safely and were now heading down the other lane when we saw truck's headlights bobbling weirdly in our mirrors and heard a slamming sound followed by the tumult of a tree crashing down through limbs and brush. The truck in pursuit had tried to take the turn but had hit the curb and flown out of control into the woods. I freed my cast from behind the brake pedal and we got the hell out of there.
We were too shaken up to make out and she just wanted to go home..."slowly please". Dejected, kind of horny still, I drove her home and listened to the mournful sounds of the Smiths' dirge-like tunes emitting from the speakers, knowing the band had composed the gloom for me alone.
She kissed me goodnight quickly and got out of the car and I drove home thinking of the events of the evening and realizing my luck and wondering if the truck's inhabitants were dead or bleeding but not worrying enough to go find out or report it. I lay in my bed that night and thought about my car, my leg, my sorrowful love life...and then at some point in the waiting for sleep the word "college" popped up and I drifted off into slumber with a half smile on my zit-half-covered face.