To: My car that won’t die.

Die already. You have had a great life, a really good go. You have been reliable and a VERY good car to me, but it’s time you retire. You see, your glory years have long since passed…

You were exactly what I wanted when I bought my first car. I was picky and wanted your blue color and I wanted your tinted windows and I even wanted your manual roll down windows for my crazy fear of driving into water. You were a Chevy Cavalier sitting on a Ford lot, sitting behind the building waiting to be cleaned – you weren’t even technically for sale yet. You didn’t have a cd player, but the dealer paid for me to have one installed and you were great on gas.

We moved to the big city and you got me through the crazy commute across the city from home to school, or school to work. Your trunk even made an excellent make-shift closet when I split up with my boyfriend and lived on the couches of friends.

I remember the one and only windshield chip you received from a rock thrown from under a truck on the 407 one morning on my way to school.

When I moved from the big city there was nothing you couldn’t move. You have moved many Ikea ‘as is’ items I’d find including a chair and coffee table already assembled. You’ve moved a 36 inch television and stand in the same trip! You’ve provided me with more than enough space to hold everything I’ve ever wanted relocated. Once you even held all my most valuable possessions in a parking garage while I went to a concert in another part of the city – your tinted windows never revealing the contents. You also smuggled a wooden bench and hundreds of dollars’ worth of shower gifts across the border without so much of a blink of an eye from border security.

I drove the crap out of you and you let me. You never got me stuck in snow; never left me abandoned anywhere, and always started.

Three years ago I handed your keys off to my new husband so that I could drive the ‘safer’ car on the highway and since then I’ve watched you deteriorate. Your gas gage stopped working, your windshield cracked, and your air conditioning gave up. However, nothing major has gone wrong, nothing that would justify us giving you up.

You back-fired recently scaring T into keeping you parked only to have the mechanic re-set your computer and your gas gage issue resolved itself – you are not getting worse you are getting better! However, last night I found a piece of you that had rusted so badly it had fallen off. I give you it was a small piece, but I’d hate to have T have to Fred Flintstone it home from work one day – well actually, I wouldn’t hate it if I got to watch it go down from a distance!

Anyway you have been a very, very good car. You are almost 13 years old and have over 250K km’s on you. As much as T has faith in you and won’t let you die I cannot trust you to move my upcoming spawn from point A to point B if we were ever in a pinch.

I will be very sad to see you go. You were my first car, and you have been very good to me. Thank you for all the great memories, you will be missed.

This is a pic taken during the cavalier's last long distance trip to Cedar Point. 'Pittsburgh' the giant penguin T won decided to take a turn driving.