The Test Drive
The Test Drive!
With five thousand dollars in my pocket, I sat anxiously in the passenger seat of my uncle’s car. Why was I so anxious? I know why, because I was on my way to buy my very first car. I was seventeen at that time and had worked like a dog throughout my sophomore and junior years in high school to come up with five thousand dollars. And getting a car with my hard earned money was a very big thing for me. What really followed that day of my first car shopping is an experience I will remember for a long time to come.
My uncle is a car dealer. He had promised to take me to the GRAA, a “dealers only” car auction held in Rockford every week. The GRAA is a used car auction where car dealers get their used cars at dirt-cheap prices and then sell them at jacked up prices. That’s why I was there, to get a very nice car at a very low price. It was the month of January and the weather forecast predicted a snowstorm later that day. We finally arrived at the auction house around 9 o’ clock. As soon as I got out of the car, a gust of cold air hit me. The temperature was roughly fourteen degrees and God knows what the wind chill was; I was cold. No! Not just plain cold but very cold. What a relief, we got to step inside the auction house and a man checked my uncle’s dealer license. After seeing it the man led us into the main auction hall. The hall was packed with people and all I could hear was the auctioneer mumbling as loud as he could. I looked at my uncle and saw him signaling me to follow him. Soon we were standing outside in a very big parking lot with at least a thousand cars in it. On top of everything I was not feeling cold anymore. Even though I was outside in the same weather that I had encountered five minutes ago. Some how I had no time to feel cold.
My uncle led me to a small Hyundai and we got inside. He started the engine and took the car to a strip of straight roadway, a part of the auction facility where...