Personal Narrative: My Impactful First Car

My Impactful First Car There aren’t many events in my life that come into my mind when I think about past memories. However, growing up in a low-income immigrant family from Vietnam, we could only afford one vehicle. Thus, ten different family members shared this one vehicle which made even the simplest of task difficult like going to Wal-Mart to buy food for the family. I remember there was a point in my life when I turned sixteen that I decided to help by getting a job to pay the monthly bills, but even that task was difficult to accomplish since I didn’t always having the transportation I needed to get to work consistently. Every other day I was running late or missing working completely because someone else had to use the car for that

Things like getting to work which was difficult for me was now made simpler. I was able to produce my own time schedule for work, school, and life. Thus, I was allowed to go back to school for my education by scheduling my classes for the morning so that it didn’t interfere with my job at UPS or the local seafood shop. As a result, I was free from the stress of consistently missing work which lifted a huge weight off my shoulder and it felt like a breath of fresh air. Furthermore, I no longer needed to discuss the availability of the car with my family because I now had my own. I remember always having to gather with my family every Sunday night before bed to discuss my plans for the week to have any schedule conflict between them and myself. However, with my car, carpooling and asking for transportation to get from point a to point b was no longer necessary for myself. At the same time, the purchase of my first car granted me the ability to go anywhere at any giving time if the weather was great. Therefore, I was driving to the park, the library, and the mall with no intended purpose to get out of the house to allow myself time to myself. For this reason, my car allowed me the exhilarating feeling of being self-independent and provided me with an unforgettable taste of freedom that is unexplainable like trying foreign food for the first time. Along with freedom, the purchase of my first

As a matter of fact, learning to drive is a must learn skill for myself. Of course, the best way to learn is by practicing a skill repetitively. Therefore, I was constantly driving in the empty parking lot of the locally closed down Tinseltown to teach myself how to drive. With all the constant driving I was doing, there were times where car trouble suddenly arose. However, experiencing car problems went a long way for my ever-growing thirst of being a more knowledgeable person. In fact, I once had a dead battery one early morning in November which cause me to miss a flight to see my family for Thanksgiving in Texas. For this reason, I taught myself how to jumpstart my car’s battery which gave me a knowledgeable skill I didn’t have previously before having my first car. In addition, I used my car every day of the week so problems with the car occurred daily since it was a used card. For the most part, I prevented these problems by figuring out how to do my own maintenance work. Before my first car, I didn’t care enough to learn how to change the oil. I took my car to Jiffy lube bi-monthly to change the oil for me, but a bad experience one visit cause my car to leak oil which made me learn to do it on my own. As a result, I can now change my own oil. In the long run, the purchase of my first vehicle gave me life-long knowledge that is necessary in the future. In addition to the benefit of