01 Jul Three lessons from my first car.

By show of hands, who can remember their first car? 🙋🏻‍♀️ You can probably remember the make and model, the colour, perhaps even the smell? What about its quirks? When I was growing up, my Dad owned a auto body repair shop. I was fortunate he was in the position to give me my first car, it was a 1989 Ford Laser that he bought from a lovely old lady for $500. This car was well taken care of, despite being 16 years old by the time I got it, it was in excellent condition – or that’s the way I remember it anyway!

One day I was driving down to feed my horse, I’d just come off the highway and stopped at a set of traffic lights when my car stalled and wouldn’t start again. I was on my own just outside of an industrial area and had a massive truck behind me. I put it in park and tried to start it but there was nothing happening, just the click of the key in the ignition. The light turned green and I was stuck, the man in the truck behind me started blasting his horn at me, as if I didn’t see the light had turned green already. I put on my hazard lights and he continued to blast his horn at me but there’s no way I could move that car from where it was. I know you’re thinking, why didn’t you just get out and push it off the road? Well, what this truck driver couldn’t see and I haven’t told you, is that I had fractured my foot the weekend prior and couldn’t put any weight on my right foot – I was driving with my left foot as it was!

This guy was getting really mad, I could see him in the mirror yelling, hands gesturing, and still banging on that horn. So I did the one thing I hoped would calm him down. I got out of my car, leant against it standing on my left foot, showed him my bandaged up right foot and put my hands out like ‘what do you expect me to do here?’ 🤷🏻‍♀️

Lesson: sometimes when we see someone broken down, it is OUR problem too. Taking the time to stop and offer assistance may not be your only option but it may be their only hope.

The mans face dropped when he saw me. I knew straight away he was probably feeling like a bit of an ass after being so upset. He put his hazard lights on, got out of his truck and came over to push my car to the side of the road, asked me if I was ok before getting back in his truck and driving around me. As it turns out my car needed a new alternator, which the mechanic fitted and my car was back on the road again. Well, that was until it broke down AGAIN a week later 🤦🏻‍♀️

I couldn’t believe it! This time I was at a service station, filled up my car and the car wouldn’t start again. I was fortunate to have a man next to me with jumper leads, he got my car started and I drove off crossing my fingers that I’d make it to my Dad’s workshop. I arrived and a quick check revealed the new alternator was faulty. It was a simple fix, swap the faulty alternator for a new one, and my car was on the road once more – never to have another mechanical problem ever again.

Lesson: Try again. Just because a problem wasn’t resolved the first time, doesn’t mean it can’t be resolved at all.

After owning my little car for a couple of years, I swapped it with my Dad for a newer Toyota Celica he had as a loan car for his workshop. My little car was an automatic, which made it a great loan car because anyone could drive it, whereas the Celica was a manual. A lady borrowed the Ford Laser from my Dad while her car was being repaired. Ten minutes after she drove off, the phone rang and she was on the line. The lady had an accident in the loan car – ‘a little bump’ were her exact words. I told her it was ok and to bring it back for us to have a look at, which is when she told me that it couldn’t be driven. This wasn’t such a ‘little bump’ after all! The car was totalled because she had T-boned another mans ute, nearly writing his car off too. I was emotionally attached to that little car, it was MY first car! Fortunately, no one was hurt, the mans car was repaired at Dad’s workshop and has been a customer ever since, and I had my new car and wasn’t going to be any worse off. Life would go on.

Lesson: if there is someone or something in your life which no longer serves you, let it go. People and things are not meant to be in your life forever, wisdom is knowing when the time has come to let them go and move on with YOUR life, YOUR dreams, YOUR journey.