The next few years after the death of my Olds saw my brother and I squabbling over my stepfather's car when he wasn't using it. First it was a blue turbo Volvo, then a Toyota Cressida, then some sort of Oldsmobile (much smaller than mine was). Eventually it made sense for me to have a car of my own again - Charlie probably got tired of never having his car - and he took me shopping for a used car.

I ended up with pretty much the opposite of the Oldsmobile - it was a tiny black Nissan Pulsar, and it had a stick shift, which I had no idea how to use. So we took a couple spins in the lot behind the local pharmacy until Charlie deemed me good enough to hit the streets. I had to get good with that stick fairly quickly - we lived on a street with a serious slant.

For a while my brother shared it with me, somehow cramming his 6-foot, 200-or-so-pound frame in that tiny thing. I'd get in after and it was like he'd been taking a nap in there or something, the seat was leaned so far back! Then I moved out to a group house and it came with me. It lasted me for a few years before too many things went wrong with it and I finally decided it was time for it to go.

Next car