Can I Get A Toot Toot!?! Can I Get A Beep Beep!?!

In April of 2014 I bought myself a brand new Dodge Avenger. A car that I instantly fell in love with and created a multitude of memories in over the past decade. Well, not even two weeks ago, I went and traded that faithful friend in for a brand new 2024 vehicle.

The past year had seen my Avenger face one issue after another, all of which cost me plenty of preferred-to-have-spent-elsewhere dollars, so naturally, I was most eager and excited for this upgrade. Despite my eagerness and excitement, I found myself in the tailend of my new vehicle transaction facing an emotional flood of memories. I foolishly never imagined feeling sad or nostalgic about parting ways with that car, but as I was signing those purchasing papers, I realized I was saying goodbye to one of my closest friends.

I know plenty of people do, but I never name my cars, so my Avenger was simply known as just that, my Avenger. I got it roughly three weeks before moving to California and the first memory I created in it was driving out west with Melissa and my mom. Three days and two nights of the three of us and my Avenger forging our own westward expansion. I have so many memories of incidents happening in and around that car, most of these are going to sound just horrible, but looking back, they’re oddly nostalgic now.

I ran over a traffic cone at like 1:30 in the morning on my way home from Disneyland and it got stuck underneath my car for a bit. I had to pull over and yank it out and as I did, I saw pink and red liquids leaking out from underneath my Avenger. Well, one of those was evidently power steering. I opted to drive it home nonetheless as the alternative was waiting for a tow truck. It was honestly kind of terrible, you don’t realize how important power steering is till you’re without it. Had to get a rental car for over a week while it got repaired. Thank goodness for insurance! Only cost me my $500 deductible to fix!

Went and saw this Brad Pitt helmed World War II movie, Allied, with my good friend California Melissa and when we got back to my car one of the tires was flat. She and I were able to put the spare on right then and there in the Promenade Temecula mall parking lot. I was so impressed with us that night!

I was driving to Disneyland with my then friend Joseph and he hit the armrest with his elbow that’s in the passenger door and knocked the control panel out. Not on purpose or anything, just somehow happened. Anyway, from then on, the frame holding the window control and locking buttons would randomly pop up and out anytime someone hit it just right.

You all know I HATE blood! HATE IT! Only twice in my life have I been able to withstand the sight of it and once was in my car. Garrett was being antagonistic to Colsen and Colsen hit Garrett right in the nose, causing Garrett’s nose to start gushing blood. I pulled the car over and held a bunch of napkins underneath Garrett’s nose to stop the bleeding. Oh my goodness was that a miracle in retrospect. I didn’t feel nauseous or sickly from the sight of Garrett’s blood. I just jumped right into dad mode and took care of my little buddy, even if he did probably deserve what happened to him. Nonetheless, that’ll forever be one of my miracle moments because any other time I can’t even hear a story about blood without wanting to pass out.

When I moved back to Illinois my Avenger developed this incessant clicking whenever the weather would change drastically outside, or even inside the vehicle. It would just click, click, click itself away for about twenty seconds each time. My favorite memory of this was when I was working at Dillard’s and went to lunch at my beloved Boston Market with two of my peers and on the way back to the store it started doing that obnoxious clicking. The girl in the backseat asked the one in the front if she was going to stop tapping her heels and front seat and I both laughed so hard because she’d been in my car before, so knew of the clicking, backseat had no clue! Once backseat understood it was the car and not front seat she too laughed, but that was such a funny moment for us all. You really had to be there. I never got that clicking fixed so from 2017 till 2024 it would click itself crazy every spring and fall and sometimes sporadic moments throughout the year. Honestly, it was an equal opportunity clicker.

Perhaps my undisputed favorite memories from my Avenger were the one, two, three, FOUR times I pooped my pants in it! Not too many people can make that claim to fame! Wildly enough, those are only my fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh times pooping my pants! Praying there isn’t an eighth, but if there is, I really hope it doesn’t occur in my new vehicle! I certainly don’t need to christen it in this fashion!

When I started tearing up at Cassens Chrysler Jeep & Dodge Dealership while buying my new vehicle my first thoughts were about the four times I pooped my pants in there. Greg the manager made some comment about all the memories we make in our cars and I stopped short of telling him how beloved and beautiful those pants pooping stories are to me, NOT because I was embarrassed, but I had been there like three hours already and was ready to go. You can’t tell someone you pooped your pants in your car four times and then roll out on them, obviously they’re going to want to hear how and why. I just didn’t have the energy to commit to telling those stories in any capacity, so I neglected that share, but I do hope he reads this and follows those links above. He should know just how special of a sedan he got from my trade in.

Well, as always, THANK YOU so much for viewing! I’m sure you all have some lovely memories tied to your past vehicles as well and I’d appreciate the shares! Please feel free to drop a comment below as I love reading and responding to them! I’ll return soon with another all new post, so until then, I wish you all, all the best!