{"id":168,"date":"2005-03-08T17:32:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-08T21:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crunchythoughts.com\/?p=168"},"modified":"2006-08-07T20:05:35","modified_gmt":"2006-08-08T01:05:35","slug":"i-sold-my-baby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crunchythoughts.com\/?p=168","title":{"rendered":"I sold my baby"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I drove my Contour to work today. It&#8217;s been a while since I drove her last, and I haven&#8217;t driven her reguarly since June. As we zip along Hamilton Road with my A-tag dangling on the rear-view mirror, I hope that she isn&#8217;t mad at me for what I am about to do. At noon, I am going to hand over the keys for a cashier&#8217;s check. I am going to sell my baby.<\/p>\n<p>__________________________<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/nautile.blogspot.com\/2004\/07\/balls-of-steele.html\">&#8220;We didn&#8217;t trade her in; we&#8217;re going to try to sell her ourselves.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is from the linked post of July 8, 2004. That was eight months ago &#8212; to the day. I never would have thought it would take this long for us to sell my car. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, as the expression goes. At least Steven and I learned something about ourselves from the whole car-selling experience: WE WILL NEVER SELL A CAR ON OUR OWN EVER AGAIN.<\/p>\n<p>After all, it did take us eight long months to finally find a buyer. All the moving and job-hunting that has gone on over the past fall and winter didn&#8217;t help any, either. An advert on cars.com only brought in uninterested callers and one smartass car salesman from Mississippi. We never could get the ball rolling until I posted some car ads around the University last month. Proof again that the best advertising is of the free sort.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m proud of this advert; I am told it amused many people.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.crunchythoughts.com\/Images\/my%20baby.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>By the end of the week we had two guys lined up to test drive the car. The car had other ideas &#8212; she refused to start that morning. After much cursing and gesturing, all we could do was apologize to the first interested party and say, &#8220;I&#8217;m so sorry, but the car won&#8217;t start this morning.&#8221; It was a very humbling moment, but surprisingly we were able to fix the car with five good dollars spent at AutoZone &#8212; this was the climatic finish to a whole &#8216;nother battery story &#8212; and made it to the next appointment.<\/p>\n<p>Soon we had three offers for the car. One was a low-ball pitch after a grand exaggeration of petty faults, one was from the very forgiving first party for whom the car wouldn&#8217;t start the first go-around, and one that just drove off with my car today. He promised he would take good care of my baby.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.crunchythoughts.com\/Images\/sold_baby.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>__________________________<\/p>\n<p>Bye, Raspberry Beret. I close my eyes and see us parking outside of my dorm window. I check my watch: it&#8217;s exactly two hours and twenty-two seconds from Alabaster to Auburn. We didn&#8217;t know it was illegal to park there.<\/p>\n<p>I see us driving to Fort Payne that first time; the morning DJs are debating during their review of <a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/title\/tt0268380\/\">Ice Age<\/a>.  I quite liked that movie.  We&#8217;re driving through the cut in the mountain.<\/p>\n<p>I see us driving from Scottsboro with a very tiny Renton in the passenger seat. I tell him that he&#8217;ll like my apartment and that I love him. He mews. You fly across Sand Mountain towards home.<\/p>\n<p>I see us driving in circles at the Thompson High School parking lot; it&#8217;s pouring rain and I don&#8217;t have my contacts in. We&#8217;re on a test drive. I&#8217;m thinking I like you. The song is playing on the radio.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.crunchythoughts.com\/Images\/me_and_my_car.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I drove my Contour to work today. It&#8217;s been a while since I drove her last, and I haven&#8217;t driven her reguarly since June. As we zip along Hamilton Road with my A-tag dangling on the rear-view mirror, I hope that she isn&#8217;t mad at me for what I am about to do. At noon, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchythoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchythoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchythoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchythoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchythoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crunchythoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchythoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchythoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchythoughts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}