Personal Narrative: My First Car

The Beginning

Although I am still young, and my driving experience could be considered limited, I have still had experiences with a number of cars. The first car I ever had was my grandmother’s. The second was a Saturn Vue, the third was a Mazda 3, and my most recent was another Saturn Vue. It may seem like a lot, but there’s quite a timeline detailing when and why I changed cars. My grandmother’s car was a 1992 Dodge Dynasty. It ended up having a fair amount of difficulties, which we decided would be better to sell than continually put money into. With the first Saturn Vue, the deal was that I got the car for three years in high school, then my brother got it. When my brother took over the view, I learned to drive a manual and took

I had a very negative stigma about me with my first car. While I was happy to have the car that belonged to my grandmother as it reminded my family and I of her, others judged me solely on the appearance. They saw me as a “poor” kid, a loser, and an outcast. Despite these things never being verbally conveyed to me, I got the message; it was that point where I put more focus on the appearance of my vehicle because others placed so much value on it. When I took over the Mazda, other’s perception of me completely changed, as did my behavior. I wasn’t an outcast anymore, I was just another college student, and I wasn’t a loser or thought of as a poor kid because I had a “lame, old car.” How I was seen by others completely changed when I switched vehicles, but how my family saw me didn’t change much. They didn’t see the car as one of the defining elements of who I was, rather, they saw how I was with the car. My family even came up with nicknames for the car, including “sporty” and “little zoom zoom.” Sayings such as, “look at you in that little sporty car” became second nature to me and gave me a different connection to the car because both the car and I were recognized and given