Possetion and Identity

After reading about a woman who lost her house and all her possessions in a fire, I was prompted to think about what possessions I have in my home that I would be as devastated if I lost them. She focused a lot on her piano, which makes me think of the many instruments that my brother and I have stored in the basement. While the loss of my guitars or my brothers drum set would be a traumatic experience, I don't think I would be as devastated as when I found out that my Jetta had been totaled and that I wasn't getting it back.

 My senior year in high school was marked by a large number of ups and a few downs, but one of the major downs was when I lost my car. The accident came after school one day, I was driving my friend Nichole and her sister and my brother home in the rain. Traffic stopped short in front of me at a light that had just turned green, so I through open the clutch and coasted into it then hit the brake. The girl behind me (who was also driving a Jetta) wasn't paying close attention and slammed into my car and pushed me into the vehicle in front. At first I laughed, thinking of how absurd it was, and assumed it was a minor accident. Upon surveying the damage, I noticed that it was mostly only body damage to my front and rear bumpers, and that there didn't appear to be any major damage to the vitals of my car. The car in front of me was undamaged, but the girl who slammed me was in a wreck. Naturally my friend Nichole was crying and saying "Matty this sucks, this is the worst thing ever etc etc etc" which I naturally ignored. My brother was off smirking somewhere, trying to figure out how he was going to rig the police report in my favor most likely.

It was a few nights later that it hit me that my Jetta wasn't leaving the body shop. The girls insurance company had gotten the estimate from out body shop and decided that the cost was too high; the sandwiching of my car between the two others had crunched the entire frame by a fraction and it was not safe to drive. Now my devastation set in. My dad presented me with the after market radio which I had installed in the car, saying the body shop was nice enough to recover it for me. I sat on the couch holding the radio I was so proud of and though about how it was part of a whole car which had become so "me" over time.

The car had a black interior and red paint job, both my favorite in cars. It was fast and handled well, with a sunroof and good sound system. All of these things exemplified not only what I loved in cars but said something about myself, especially its manual transmission. I didn't realize how important my car was to me until it was ripped from my person, and I was forced to fill the void which had arisen from my loss. Even today, my current car is an important part of who I am, but when I think of my "favorite car" or even my first car (it was actually my second) I remember my Jetta.