Ghetto car

I've mentioned before how much I hate our car right? Ok, well I hate it. It hates me right back. It's definitely a ghetto car. I feel like the subject of a Jeff Foxworthy (redneck comedian) joke. If you have to duct tape your bumper on, you might have a ghetto car. Ha ha. Only I didn't even have any duct tape so I had to use glue. And it wasn't my bumper it was a light. You know those lights on the side of the headlights? The ones that are turn signals? Yeah, those. Tonight I had to glue the one on driver's side in place. I did the passenger's side a few months ago. That car has so many problems. I'm amazed that the rain hasn't just washed it away by now.

First of all, we bought it from a security guard at the school. We thought he was being honest. In a wonderful example of our naivety, we believed that he was a good guy just because he worked for the school. That was the first problem.

The second problem was the learning curve that came along with driving on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road. That's right, we've got right side drive and we drive on the left side of the road. Even the controls for the turn signals and the windshield wipers are on the wrong side. Holy confusing Batman! At least the first time you drive anyway. The very first time that Itchy drove the car home he was a little too far over to the left and he hit a huge gutter. We have these massive gutters. Think at least 1 1/2 feet wide and oh, 3 feet deep. Filled with toxic street run off. That had to have done some damage. My first time driving it wasn't nearly as awful or damaging.

It's been nothing but problems since then. We've had a few accidents. Our landlady's boyfriend has hit our car twice. The first time he busted our headlight. The second time only left a small dent. He has never even acknowledged what he did. Our neighbor saw the first hit and I saw the second. He's a jerk.

Itchy hit a truck one night which resulted in the passenger's side mirror off and left a huge racing stripe. He has backed into a pole (dented the rear bumper). The passenger side door now sticks when it opens. The rear bumper is dented from the 'stuck in sand towing' incident. It not all us hitting other cars either. Plenty of other cars have hit us as there are many other unaccounted for scratches and dents. But really, no one is going to leave you a note. It's all hit and run.

It hasn't all been cosmetic issues either. I wish it were only cosmetic. We've had to replace the tires, starter, battery, transmission, radiator, and a few other things that I am now forgetting. We've had to fix the leaky steering fluid (didn't work), the A/C (which doesn't work now because we had to disable the fan because of a loose bearing), the engine cooling fan (now runs all the time, instead of only when needed), and the muffler (needs to be welded again).

You'd think that with all the new parts and the extensive work that has gone into this car that it'd be in great shape. It's not. It has stalling issues. It stalls when you turn left. It stalls when are stopped for too long. It stalls before we even leave the driveway. It stalls as you are going around the roundabouts. I can't even tell you the number of times that we have to shift into neutral and restart the car while we are coasting down the street. It happens EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

We can't buy a new car. We are leaving in a year. We've put too much money into this thing. What if we bought a new used car and then had to start putting money into that? How many transmissions do we need to replace? It just has to last for another year.

ETA: Geez, I can't believe I forgot this stuff. These two tidbits are perhaps the funniest of all. Our car is so ghetto that it starts with a plastic spoon. Or a pocket knife. Or our friends apartment key. Or anything else that will fit into the ignition. Which explains why it has been stolen twice. Not just once people, TWICE. Our car is so uber ghetto that everyone wants it. Except us. We weren't all that sad when it was stolen.