Wednesday I took our upstairs renter Michelle car shopping. She has been staying with us for a while, renting the upstairs apartment. Anyway, she is 18 years old and works full time and goes to college also. I admire her for her work ethics and desire to further her education. Well, her car’s transmission is bad and she cannot shift into reverse. So I volunteered to take her car shopping as I was off from work that day.

We drove to a couple of dealerships before we finally arrived at Green-Gifford. First she took a nice Pontiac Sunfire out for a test ride. This was followed by test drives of a Kia Rio and a Hyundai Elantra I think. Anyway the Sunfire and Hyundai were OK but the Rio was a dog. It had a 1.5 Liter engine and had the pickup of a push mower. But the real news is how terrible a driver she is. I am suprised she is even alive. She had her cell phone going full blast sending text messages non-stop while she was driving, talking and doing anything. I really don’t think she ever stopped using it the entire car shopping trip. Mix an 18 year old driving a car she is unfamiliar with on a road she is unfamiliar with while totally distracted by her cell phone and you can picture me cringing in the passenger seat and waiting to die a horrible death. Thankfully we all survived and even managed to not buy a car at the overpriced dealerships. She finally bought a car which I have not seen yet for about $2,000 cash. The ones she was looking at before were in the 6-7 thousand dollar range. I don’t think she could have even qualified for a loan without a co-signer and her Mom and Dad had both told here they would not co-sign for her. So everything turned out OK. I just hope the car she bought holds up long enough for her to afford a real car some day.