Others have said, and I have to concur, that a car is a really strange thing to spend a lot of money on. I have a love/hate relationship with my '95 Escort. I bought this car because it was the best car I could find on short notice that was both reliable enough so that I wouldn't have to put any money or effort into it, and also cheap enough so that I could pay cash for it. The last thing I want is a monthly car payment, which seems like nothing but a monthly waste to me.

The guy who sold this car to me, a friend of the actual owner, chuckled as I handed over the check. "Are you a college student?" he asked. I said no, but my friend who was with me at the time mentioned that she was a college student. Immediately, he assumed that I was buying the car for her. "It's a good car for a college student, I suppose. It'll last you a long time." But his implication was clear -- while it is a good winter starter and is in good condition, it is certainly not a car that a grown man should be driving. Grown men do not drive cars that are so...green.

I've mentioned the novel Mailman by J. Robert Lennon a couple of times on this site. One of the most hilarious (to me) details about this story is that the main character, a secretly insane letter-carrier, drives my exact car, except his is blue. The car is described as "maybe the worst car ever made, this little blue hedgehog half made of plastic, with an engine that whines and pants as it climbs." I know that whine and that pant. Another reason I bought this car was that I thought it would get good gas milage. The milage is passable, but not terrific. The little lawnmower engine has to work too hard on Duluth's hills.

Another thing about this car is that when I bought it, it had nine Green Bay Packers stickers on it -- huge, atrocious helmets flanking either side, logos and more helmets on the rear bumper, decals on every window. I spent several days with a bottle of Goo-B-Gone scraping those bastards off. Everyone I talked to urged me to keep them. "They're part of the personality of the car," they said. I couldn't stand them. Eventually after too much toil, I decided that some of the window decals could stay, because you don't even notice them. I slapped a Harvey Birdman Attorney at Law sticker over one of the helmets on the rear bumper. Then I went to Menard's and purchased a letter H, which I placed over the "P" on the largest sticker, changing it from "Packers" to "Hackers." I meant to scrape the Green Bay logo off of that one and also the "S" at the end, making it say "Hacker," but I never got around to it. Now, everyone either thinks it reads "Ghackers" because of the logo, or else they take it to mean that I'm a big Vikings fan and that I'm saying Green Bay are a bunch of hacks. I only did it to align myself with the nerds instead of the jocks, but whatever. If driving a bright green hedgehog doesn't prove I'm a geek I doubt a sticker will make any difference.

Recently, my work schedule was forcibly switched from the leisurely evening shift to the grueling overnight shift. There is only one benefit to working this shift, and that is the money. This shows most readily in the parking lot, where after midnight, suddenly the ratio of hot cars to bombs tips heavily toward the sweet rides. Generally, I think most cars look the same, but some of the cars I see in the parking lot at night turn my head.

This only makes me like the Hedgehog more. The day I require heated leather seats and a DVD player on the back of the driver's seat is the day I start taking the bus. Still, there's some extra money coming in. I think the Hedgehog needs speakers.

If only they could install them at 4am.