jalopy (n.) - a dilapidated old vehicle

Or, at least that’s what Merriam-Webster says. I guess I’m here to argue otherwise.

Imagine this: You just turned 16 years old. Your parent wakes you up with a jingling set of keys in their hand. “Happy birthday. You’d better come out to the driveway.” You throw on any pair of clothes you can grab and hustle to the front door. As you pull on the shirt that you probably wore yesterday, your mind is racing. You flip through the mental scrapbook of your dream first cars. You hope it’s your first pick, or your second, or even your third. It could be a ‘67 Chevy C10 with a 350 and a 4-speed. Oh, that would be awesome. Or, it could be a 2015 BMW 328i in Alpine white. Modern, smooth, comfortable…that would be good. Maybe it’s that Mazda RX-7 that your neighbor down the street had owned for decades. Oh man, you’d been ogling that thing forever! You throw on a pair of shoes, step outside, and…

…it’s 1999 Chevy Lumina. Or a Mitsubishi Mirage. Or, (God forbid), a Yugo.

Oh goody. You didn’t know that “complete and utter disappointment” and “ugly steaming pile of rhinoceros shit” could even be options in your wheelhouse. Good luck getting dates in THAT.

But, to paraphrase Ferris Bueller, at least you have a piece of shit. It’s probably not fast enough to get out of its own way, and the cosmetic surfaces have likely seen better days. But it’s your piece of shit. With time, you will learn to love it and turn it into your own. And so, you get a minimum-wage job and start saving up. You make shopping carts and wish lists. You do the necessary maintenance and install the aftermarket parts that you can afford. You have a dream and you do the best you can with what you have.

And, by definition, you have a jalopy.

But, in time, that jalopy grows into something much more meaningful, more beautiful, and more powerful than it had been when you first laid eyes on it. Through thick and thin, you share your struggles with it. You form a sentimental attachment to it. You’re willing to beat on it a little bit, maybe make a few mistakes with it, but in the end, you want to take care of it. You want to make it only moderately crappy. You want to be proud of it. You want to make memories with it, and that you do. It takes you through high school. It gets you to and from that first date. Maybe it takes you to college. Mine did, and it only caught fire fifty miles from home. But it was part of the adventure, and I don’t think I would have had it any other way.

So, a jalopy isn’t just an old car. It’s a journey. It’s a learning experience. It’s an avenue that brings you to car shows, gets you on-track, and introduces you to Facebook groups, where people like you can proudly post about their own tastefully modified, restored, and transformed jalopies. It creates a way of life that enables people to appreciate not only their crapcans but also others, too.

And with that, you’ve caught the car bug. Welcome to Moderately Jalopy. We can only hope that you’ll torment your kid with a clunker of their own someday.

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