The Burn Out

I was the Reverend’s daughter and it was my Junior year.  I was  a seventeen year old girl just getting over that awkward stage.  I was kind of  geeky and almost cool.   She was my first car.  An unsalted butter colored nineteen seventy seven mustang Ghia.  Seventy seven was not the greatest year for the mustang.  Still, she had a 351 cubic inch, Holly Four Barrel engine under the hood and she  roared like a  grizzly when you revved her up.  Alas, the outside left something to be desired.  In 1977 the Ford Mustang looked like a mutated mistake.  A pathetic cross between a Pinto and a Maverick.  The dirt brown vinyl top clashed dreadfully with the curvaceous signature mustang hood and etched sides.  Nevertheless,  She still had 300 horses under that curvy little hood.  Just like me, She was kind of geeky and almost cool.
I was so infatuated with her.  I loved the smell of her leather bucket seats and the look of her wood grained dash.  I carefully washed and waxed her, all summer long.  I conditioned her leather seats and religiously massaged “Amorall” into her vinyl top and polished Her galloping pony. I was so excited about the start of the new school year in the fall .  I would proudly drive Her into the Junior parking lot, on the first day of school.  The sun would glisten off of the layers of turtle wax that adorned her exterior, everyone would look and I would finally be “cool.”
The day came.  Like a good Reverend’s daughter I went to seminary every week    day morning, before school. One the first day of school,  at six o clock am  I pulled Her into the smooth pearly grey, concrete, church parking lot and carefully parallel parked Her front and center, for all to see and covet.
Seven am, seminary was out.  Good Christian teenagers came pouring out of the building.  Everyone stopped and stared.  I waited, anticipating their immediate approval and acceptance of Her. To my surprise, there was no acceptance, just mocking and scorning.  Rather than exalting my social status, She had caused a social apocalypse.
Frustrated, near tears I opened Her door.  I plopped down into Her soft bucket seat, feeling comforted by the way She held me.  I quietly turned the key and sadly ran my hands around the steering wheel.  Slowly I eased her into reverse and crept out of the parking space.  I revved her engine, as I continued to back her up, very slowly, drawing everyone’s eyes to her.  Her back tires touched the rear edge of the long concrete parking lot.
Wretchedly,  I dropped Her into neutral. I pushed the accelerator all the way to Her floorboards.  Waking up the three hundred horses sleeping under the hood.  Pistons fired,  the engine roared and I squeezed the clutch, slamming her into first gear. The furies hell surged through all eight cylinders.  The tires spun and squealed, the smell of burning rubber filled the cockpit.  I thrust her into second gear and then third. After tattooing a sixty foot double black line across the church parking lot; I  fishtailed the corner and sped down the street.  
That night at dinner I sat at the table secretly reminiscing about our vintage victory.  The Reverend  looked up at me and raised one of his bushy eyebrows.  “There is about sixty five feet of  black rubber etched into the church parking lot.  There is only one car in this town, I know, that can do that.”