My First Car

*This story has come up in conversation quite a bit since it happened in spring 2004. I have told it many times, but I have never sat down to write it out, until now. I hope you enjoy it! *

A long, long time ago, before I had the ability to drive, and I was still living with my parents and life was still relatively simple, we owned a Ford Focus. It was a beautiful car: cherry red, shiny, new, still even had that new car smell. It was to belong to my sister and then when I got my license I was going to share it with her. It was a brilliant plan.

One beautiful, sunny, non-typical Ohio day, my sister took our grandmother out to a few odd places so she could get some things done. When they returned, she parked in my family’s driveway and went inside. My sister came in and found me on our cordless phone with one of my friends. It was then she kindly reminded me that I had to go outside and water the plants on the front deck. I took the phone with me and went.

I was watering plants as I was talking. Since the car was in my line of sight I started to tell my friend all about it. Bragging a little at the fact that I hadn’t even turned sixteen and already I had a car to drive. Slowly, I detailed each feature: Anti lock breaks, power seats, locks, and windows, a 5 disk CD player, a mass amount of space in the car, and best of all… tinted windows.

Now, I was staring at the car with the phone to my ear and the garden hose in my hands wondering when exactly my sister asked for tinted windows. I hadn’t and I knew it was an extra feature. And this tint looked extremely dark. With the hose running, still in my hand, I walked toward the car.

The closer and closer I got to the car itself, the more and more I smelled the grill from my neighbor. Whatever they were cooking smelled like something horrible. I mentioned this to my friend. I got to the car and set my hand of the hood. It was exceptionally hot. I shrugged this off to the fact that my sister had just got home and proceeded to brag a bit more about my car. It was even so new that it only had a few miles on it. My friend then asked me how many miles it had. I opened the door to get in the car and check the mileage.

I never got that far.

As I opened the door, a cloud of thick black smoke came over me. My car was on fire.

Let me pause for a moment and go over the scene again. The garden hose was still in my hand. The cordless phone was up to my ear. My other hand was on the door. I could have done many things, among the options were:

A) Point the hose at the fire and try to extinguish it.
B) Hang up on my friend and call the fire department.
C) Close the door so I was not inhaling all of the toxic car smoke.
D) Scream and freeze in horror.

Guess what option I picked.

Yup, that’s right. I froze. Not knowing what to do, I took a DEEP breath of the toxic fumes and screamed the longest and most high pitched scream that anyone has ever heard. I am not lying when I say that dogs started to bark. As the smoke-filled scream delighted the neighborhood dogs, my neighbor ran out of his house, across the yard, onto my driveway and pushed me out of the way.

He looked at me with a mixture of "What the Fuck?" and "Give Me the Hose." So I gave him the hose and dropped the phone. He then started spraying the fire while his son called the fire department. All the while, I stood useless.

Long story short, wires were crossed in the dash and the car would have exploded if my neighbor had not ran to my rescue.

The good in the story come from the fact that it is blatantly obvious that I cannot ever be trusted to use a hose correctly. I was never again asked to water the plants on the deck. That, and from sucking in the fumes from the fire, I had a wicked contact buzz for the next few hours.