Cool cat

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One of the best things about deep-cleaning my room was uncovering all the little treasures I had forgotten about. And then I came across this old photo of my beautiful car!

This wasn’t the first car I ever bought. That honor goes to a blue Mustang that I owned for exactly four months before my boyfriend borrowed it and crashed it into a tree, totaling the car I had saved for. And let me tell you, that was a LOT of babysitting money!

Thankfully, I had insurance and was able to buy another car right away. That’s when I got this sweet Datsun 260Z. It was a two-seater, stick shift, and just about the coolest car I had ever driven...which, admittedly, wasn’t saying much since I was only sixteen. But still… it was pretty awesome!

I grew up eight miles from town, which was a big deal back in the day. Living out in the woods meant there was no chance of casually carpooling with friends or walking anywhere, so having my own vehicle was practically a necessity. And I had so much fun in this little car, driving around with friends and feeling like I had the freedom of the entire world.

Of course, we didn’t exactly have the safety standards of today. Yes, we would sometimes make someone lie down in the back, where there wasn’t even a seat. People didn’t wear seatbelts back in the early ’80s, so apparently cramming a person into a tiny cubby in the back of a sports car didn’t seem like a big deal. Looking back, I’m sure I drove way too fast and made plenty of questionable teenage decisions, but I absolutely loved that little car!

I’m not even sure who took this picture. My guess is one of the high school yearbook kids, since the average kid back then didn’t take pictures of anything nevermind.....everything. There were no smartphones, no digital cameras, no social media, and certainly no one walking around with a camera in their pocket. The yearbook kids were our memory keepers. Thankfully, they snapped a photo or two throughout the year, because without them, I’m not sure we’d have many pictures of our high school years at all.

Today, kids take pictures without giving it a second thought. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of photos can live on a phone, in the cloud, or on social media. But I have to wonder how many of those pictures will still exist forty years from now, or how many will ever actually be looked at again.

Maybe there was something special about the old-school way of doing things. We took fewer pictures, but the ones we had mattered. And every once in a while, more than forty years later, you could be deep-cleaning your bedroom and stumble across one that instantly takes you back.

One old photograph, one very cool car, and suddenly I’m sixteen again, cruising around with my friends, feeling independent, invincible, and pretty sure I was the coolest cat in town.

Funny how the things we almost forget can end up being the best treasures of all. And maybe, just maybe, the yearbook kids really did have it right. They weren’t just taking pictures, they were saving pieces of our lives for us to find again someday...  photo time capsules. 

With a few more rooms to clean, I'm now excited to see what else I might find! 

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” ~ Ferris Bueller,