Love, Hate, Better Start Walking

Hello, I have no provocative insights for today, so instead I am going to take this opportunity to rant about my relationships. Not my social relationships however, but the love hate relationships between me and cars.
To start from the beginning, I suppose we need to go back to my road test, which I failed twice before finally getting my license. Here let me complain a bit about the road test itself. I’m not sure how they choose the locations of the test sites, but it must have something to do finding the place least representative of normal driving conditions. A traffic light with no stoplight? A divided residential road? Then the actual test lasts at most ten minutes, and consists of making 2 right turns, two left turns, a three point turn, and parallel parking. This is supposed to represent my everyday driving going to and from work? I think a real driving test should at least include changing lanes on the highway, or merging into heavy traffic or something. How often do I need to parallel park? I haven’t done it since I passed my road test.
Now on to the cars themselves. Before my first road test my dad bought a car for me to use once I got on the road. It was a 1989 Mazda 323, manual transmission, that his friend was ready to junk. Well a failed that first test, but in between that one and the next, a discovered another car for sale: A black 1994 Pontiac Firebird, for only $700. Well a car that cool, for that price, with only some “minor” problems, I couldn’t resist. Well after we got it home we discovered that, in addition to the radiator fan not working, the brake lines were rusted out. So there it sat on my driveway until someone cared enough to have it fixed.
So when I finally did pass the test, with my car in disrepair, and a stick-shift I didn’t know how to drive, I found myself stuck behind the wheel of my dad’s minivan. While he drove the Mazda, I got to play soccer mom. After a few months of this, finally my dad taught me how to drive stick. In one night. Which begs the question: Why did it take so long for him to get around to it. So now I’m upgraded to stalling out in this hunkajunk for a while. With summer approaching, we finally paid out to have the brakelines in the firebird replaced, nearly a year after it was purchased. At long last, I was driving the car of my dreams. After the car overheated once and we got the fan working, all seemed well. Except for the leaking coolant line that had to be replaced. And the sparkplugs and wired that were corroded and falling apart. And the door that never closed right. And the cooling system that wouldn’t pressurize. After the EGR valve rusted out, it became apparent that this car was the worst investment I ever made. With hardware too rusted and stripped out to get the old valve off, the car is currently out of commission. At least I had the old Mazda to fall back on, until the turn signal/ wiper switches assembly busted a few days ago. So now I’m stranded at home with two cars that don’t work, and a driver’s license that wasn’t worth the trouble.