Junior year of High School everyone started to get their licenses and cars. Some kids were spoiled and got brand new cars. A girl in my grade got a brand new white Camaro; her parents dropped it off at school with a big red bow on top for her birthday for everyone to see. Most kids got used cars but they were decent for the most part. However, no one had a car worse than mine. I had, and still do to this day, a 1997 Ford Expedition.

This doesn’t sound bad until you hear the description of it, and all that it has been through. My parents bought the Expedition a couple months before I was born. They bought it for me because they wanted a big safe vehicle for our family. They called it Damian’s truck, so I think that it is cool how it lasted all of these years and ended up actually being mine. When I first got my license and they handed it down to me the rims were covered in rust. So I scraped all of the rust off for hours and then painted over it in black rustoleum, which looks like tar when it dries. The whole under body is also rotting with rust. When I close the door big chunks off rust fall off and hit the ground.

There are many problems with the Expedition, but the biggest problem of all is that the air conditioning and heat are broken. In the summer I would sweat a lot on my way to work, it was uncomfortable, but bearable. In the winter, it was near impossible to drive. The windshield would constantly fog and freeze up because there was no defrost because of the heat being broken. I would always drive with barely being able to see out the windshield most of the winter. One time I was driving my friends to an indoor soccer game and the windshield completely froze up on the highway. I had my friend stick his head out the window and tell me to steer left or right and I would look through the ice to see if I saw any red haze which would be break lights so I knew when to slow down. I drove this way for a couple miles until there was a break down lane. We got out and scraped the ice off and in the process a car came within inches of hitting my friend. That is just one instance where I almost crashed because of there being no heat, and oh yeah, only one working windshield wiper. 

The back right window won’t close either. It is stuck open a couple of inches so rain, snow and cold air always find their way into my truck. The child lock is permanently on in the back two doors. That is how my truck got the nick name the, “Trap Truck” because it traps people inside. If you thought that was the end of the list of the problems with my truck you would be wrong. There is a hole in the floor board by the gas pedal. You can actually see daylight through it and in the winter it always feels like my feet get frost bite because the freezing cold air is coming in and hitting my feet. The wheel is not centered so if you take your hands off of the wheel the whole truck with start to veer to the right. My truck has also stalled out multiple times while I was driving. My favorite time was when I was at a red light at the busiest intersection in my town, right when the light turned green my truck shut off. 

The most recent problem that developed is that there is now a hole in the exhaust manifold. So now my truck sounds like a very loud motorcycle because the exhaust isn’t going through the muffler anymore to quiet the sound of the engine. Due to this some of the exhaust comes through the vents so I have to drive with a couple windows cracked at all times to avoid breathing in too much exhaust and getting carbon monoxide poisoning. With all of these problems there’s not a chance in hell that my truck would ever pass inspection. So, for the past two years my grandpa went to a place that I will not name and pays a guy fifty bucks to get an inspection sticker for my truck.

Even though my truck is beyond terrible, I am still thankful for it and do not take it for granted. “I think that the phenomenon of taking things for granted is an interesting and important one” (Kelly). I am thankful that I did not have to pay for it. I will never take for granted something that I get for free, especially a vehicle. The issue of taking things for granted goes far beyond my story. People should not take life for granted because you never know when it can be taken away from you or seriously altered. “Sept. 11 is a day that Lackey will never forget. He was stationed at the Pentagon as an Army reservist on active duty when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the building” (Harvey). September 11th was a tragedy that shook the nation and disassembled many families and lives. It can be easy at times to take things for granted being an average U.S. citizen. Overseas soldiers are fighting so we do not have to, “The soldiers and their families have made many sacrifices in the war on terror” (Harvey). Days like Veteran’s day and Memorial Day are holidays where you should really think about times where you took things for granted. You may think your life is hard at times, but our troops overseas are fighting so our lives will be exponentially tougher.

We spend far too much time thinking about material items, “Life is too short to waste our time thinking about what we do not have” (Fern). We are very lucky to be living in the United States and not a third world country. “We are all so much more fortunate than we give ourselves credit for. We constantly preoccupy ourselves with thoughts of things we don’t have and experiences we are missing out on.” (Fern) A lot of times we never stop and think about how fortunate we are. Especially in this day and age we take things for granted far too often. If we lose our phone for a little while it seems like the whole world came to a stop. Not too long ago there were no such things as cell phones and people lived perfectly normal lives. “This generation is overindulged. It is easy to get accustomed to having things in excess and act as if we deserved it all. We are surrounded by our latest gadgets and can’t live without them” (Razon).

I cannot wait to get a new car but it will be kind of sad when I finally get rid of my truck because I’ve been riding in it ever since I was born; literally, after I was born in the hospital I was driven home in my truck. I have made so many great memories and will have so many stories to tell from driving this truck. I complain about the problems it has sometimes and make fun of it, but I do not take it for granted.

Works Cited

Fern, Ashley. "Why We Need To Stop Taking Things For Granted." Elite Daily. N.p., 6 June
2013. Web. 3 Mar. 2016.
Harvey, Alyssa. “Lackey: Don’t take things for granted.” Bowling Green Daily News (KY) 11
Sept. 2011: Newspaper Source. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.
Kelly, Thomas. “Taking Things For Granted: Comments On Harman And Sherman.”  
Philosophical Studies 156.1 (2011): 141-147. Academic Search Elite. Web. 11 Mar. 2016
Razon, Conchita C. "Why We Should Never Take Things for Granted Read More:
Http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/120667/why-we-should-never-take-things-for-granted#ixzz43bEXYMZG Follow Us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | Inquirerdotnet on Facebook." Inquirer.net. N.p., 18 Aug. 2013. Web. 11 Mar. 2016. .