On February 9, 2012, I inadvertently became a mom. Rewind a day before, my car had broke down as I approached the exit ramp on my way to school. Something was wrong with the radiator and it kept overheating. There was a lot of smoke coming from the hood of my car. As a stereotypical dumbgirl who knew absolutely nothing about cars, I panicked. I called my friends crying because I was going to be late to class and I had no idea what to do. They skipped class and drove over to where I was stranded on the side of the road, looked at my car and helped slowly drive it to the nearest auto shop to get looked at.

Long story short, that car was pretty much done for. It was an old car my mom had bought off on a coworker for $300 so there’s not much I could expect out of it. My car before that had broken down too and was also an old used car. I was upset because I didn’t intend on getting a new car so soon. I wanted to wait til graduation to finally buy myself my first brand new car with my big girl pharmacy salary money. And graduation was about 3 months away still. I was afraid I couldn’t afford it so soon because I was still making intern pay at CVS and only working about 2 days a week on my days off from school. But of course, God had other plans for me. It’s funny because in the weeks before this happened, I kept seeing Camaros everywhere. And I was constantly talking about them with my then-boyfriend now-husband and friends. It was like God was sending me signs. And then my car broke down and I had no choice but to look into getting another car asap.

I skipped class that day because I was already stressed and worried enough and went straight to car shopping with the boy that afternoon. At first I thought about getting a cheap used car to tide me over until graduation but in the end, I was talked out of that. Did I really want another unreliable used car that could potentially break down on me in another few months before graduation? I might as well bite the bullet and get a brand new car now and suck it up and make the payments before I finally upgraded to pharmacist pay and then it would be fine. I would just struggle for a bit but as long as I budgeted and was smart about my paycheck, I should be able to make it happen.

So I did. I walked in looking for a car that day and the very next day, I drove out and back to school with my very own brand new black 2012 Chevy Camaro. I’ll be honest about my car too because I really don’t care that much about status. It’s a base model. It only has a ZL1 hood because I got into an accident years later and when the body shop patched it up, my husband decided we should throw the ZL1 hood onto it instead of the regular one. I didn’t care about what’s under the hood, how fast it goes, etc, because let’s face it, I’m not a car girl. I just care that it gets me from point A to point B and that it looks nice. And I needed it to be affordable. Plus I was a brand new driver to begin with the insurance rates are not too kind if I had gone with a faster, more loaded model. So base model it was. I wasn’t mad.

Actually I loved my car. For the first few years, I took such good car of her. I hand washed her several times a month in the spring to fall months, whenever I had a day off from work and the weather was nice. I even used the good stuff since the boy is a big car enthusiast so he has all the expensive car cleaning products from the good soap, wheel cleaner, wax, rain-x, the best auto glass cleaner, the works. I kept nothing in my car either so it was always nice and clear whenever friends got into my car for a trip. When I went places, I would park far away from everyone to avoid car dings and dents.