Adventures in the Cloonmeister. Part 1.

The most douchebag thing a car-owner can do is name their vehicle after the girl they loved in high school that wouldn't give him the time of day.

The second most douchebag thing is naming your vehicle after a celebrity.

Clooney is my first and only vehicle. A silver Dodge Ram 1500, he came with a dented rear bumper and a camouflage Mossy Oak steering wheel cover representing his former owner's high school partying dude ways. He was the fourth Ram we'd checked out in the long string of cars, trucks, and SUVs that failed to meet my father's standards of excellence. They're pretty high standards.

I was thrilled to hear they were looking at a Ford Focus station wagon. For years I had harbored a secret crush on the station wagon. All I needed was a kayak to strap to the top of the thing and a few witty bumper stickers. Unfortunately, the used car salesman lied and said the car had only had one owner when it in fact had had three and had spent a few years in the New England area, meaning snow. So, Focus failed. So did Rusty the salesmen. Way to drop the ball on that one. A slew of pick-em-ups trucks also failed. Two for being too junky. One for being black with a black interior (that one was my mother's nixing). And finally the white Dodge that would have looked right at home outside the bodega blaring merengue music. And not my style. If I wanted to drive something that sounded like a dumptruck, I would buy a dumptruck, that's all I'm saying.

Finally, we found Clooney at a little used car lot in a tiny little town about an hour away. At first, I was far from thrilled.

"That's a good looking little truck," Dad said as we pulled in the parking lot. "But don't act like you like it. You hate it."
"Why?"
"Because if he thinks you like it, it's harder to bargain."
"OK."

Even though Clooney was a manual, he came home. Dad's rule was that I had to practice driving him if I expected to take him to school with me in August. Unfortunately, our driveway is not conducive to learning to reverse in a stickshift. Despite my best efforts, the most I managed to reverse without stalling out was roughy half a foot. Needless to say, there many a driving session that ended with Clooney sitting where he last stalled out and me stomping into the house in a fit of frustration. Eventually I learned it was easiest to make a huge circle through the yard and park facing the end of the driveway so that I didn't have to go through the headache of reversing. My father however was not thrilled, nor was he with my answer to his question of who cut the ruts in the yard: "Maybe one of the boys did it with their bicycle."