Ah, College
"Get out of my dreams..."

Driving can be really stressful. Even on short trips, you get stuck at lights, you have to to deal with other drivers and, in the end, you have to search for a place to park in a lot. Now, combine all this with the fact that gas prices are through the roof. God, I wish I had a car.

Walking everywhere used to be great. It gave me time to think and it kept me in shape. But after three years, I've suddenly realized that my thoughts on walks are pretty much limited to, "My legs hurt," "This is taking forever," and, "Man, my thoughts are boring." Thus began my search for a car.

There are basically three ways you can end up with a car. Well, technically, there are five options. But option four is for your parents to buy you one as a gift. The fifth way is to win one in a contest. Since I figure these are about equally unlikely, I'll be ignoring them.

The first way to get a car is to look through the back of a newspaper for deals on used cars. These cars are very cheap. But if you're even going to think about this option, you have to understand that there is always one reason (if not more) that these vehicles cost so little.

Of course, beggars can't be choosers. Looking in the paper for a used car means that you're poor and willing to settle for a bad car at the right price. Sure, you might want things like power windows, anti-lock brakes, and a model year after your birth. But for less than $500, try and be glad the car has an engine.

The second way to get yourself a car is to buy from a friend. In a lot of ways, this is like the first option. The car will be in about the same shape as any you find in a newspaper. The downside is that it costs more. Specifically, after you find out what's wrong with it, it will cost you one friend.

Either of the first two ways is good if you want a car that will last about one year before never starting again. Sure, you might get lucky and squeeze two years out of it. But as a general rule of thumb, if a car costs less than its own monthly insurance, you'll be buying a new one soon.

The last option is to actually go to a car dealership. This is kind of a mixed bag. Though this will give you the least chance of bringing home defective merchandise, it is also the most expensive. Plus, this option was the furthest from my house. Which is kind of an important factor when you don't have a car.

Car dealers scare me a bit, because it's the one job where people announce in their own commercials that they're crazy. Maybe it's okay, because it doesn't seem like a dangerous form of insanity. For the most part, it just causes them to lower their prices and offer great rebates - rarely do you see commercials about dealers gunning down their employees. Still, it had me a bit worried.

If you ever want to see the most gigantic grin you've ever seen on someone's face, walk, don't drive, into a car dealership. As soon as the dealer saw me, he knew that the only way I was getting a ride home was if I bought a car. The price of anything I bought that day had instantly increased by $3000.

The whole process made me feel just like a sixteen-year-old again. Maybe the test-drive I took reminded me of my driver's test. Maybe it was the excitement of buying my very first car. Or maybe it was the fact that the dealer had his arm around my shoulder the whole time we were walking and he kept calling me annoying nicknames. Either way.

After about an hour, he'd shown me pretty much every car on the lot. But that was the easy part. As soon as I told him about the Neon I had my eye on, we began negotiating. At first, it didn't seem like he would budge an inch, but eventually we came to a very fair deal: I would give the car a second test-drive in a week if he agreed to take his arm off my shoulder and stopped calling me "sport."

The cool thing is that now I really feel like more of an adult than ever. I'm taking my first big step towards making it on my own. Sure, I didn't have enough money to buy anything from the dealership vending machines, let alone a vehicle there, but these details usually work themselves out.