Free I Don't Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star by Judy Greer

company, that is a midwestern trifecta. You’ll talk about that for years to come. The Dodge Charger was two out of three, so we didn’t really mention it much.
    My Charger is what I would have described as a burnout car.It had a hatchback and smelled of old cigarettes, and not mine (I didn’t start smoking until months later), so I insisted on burning incense in it. Sometimes I even burned a candle in the cup holder. Not smart, but it improved the stench a bit. My biggest hurdle with my Charger was leaving the lights on. I could never remember to turn those damn lights off. Ever. I started by putting a Post-it note on my steering wheel that said “lights.” Well, I got so used to that Post-it being there that I had to add another, and another, and another. Soon there were Post-its all over the interior of my car. My father eventually had to buy me my own jumper cables because I was constantly asking strangers for a jump, and if they didn’t have their own cables, I had to wait for the next stranger to walk/drive by. It could end up being hours before I found a willing driver who was packin’ his own cables
and
didn’t look like he would rape/murder/kidnap me. Those cables were and remain one of the best gifts I’ve ever received. I got really good at jumping my car and at flagging down random people in the parking lot at Laurel Park Place, the mall where I had my after-school job. I’m certain that just about everyone who worked at that mall gave me a jump start at some point. I always got unnecessarily annoyed at people who weren’t willing to help me out—especially considering how deft I’d become at jump-starting my car. I know it probably didn’t add up—here I am so stupid that I left my lights on, but smart enough to know how to conduct electricity from one car to another without killing myself or blowing up either car.
    Putting those pesky lights aside for a moment, I loved how much crap I could fit in the hatchback of my Charger. One Halloween, my high school boyfriend Eric and I went to pick up my dog from the kennel. There were hundreds of pumpkins on the lawn and the woman in charge told us we could take as many as we wanted for free. I think we took around fifty. We took so manypumpkins that it weighed down the hatch of my car so much that it was almost dragging on the ground. We definitely grounded out when pulling in to and out of parking lots. However, the pumpkins proved to be a great bribe for people skeptical of my battery-jumping ability. Turns out people will let anyone under the hood of their car for a free pumpkin. I probably would. Why not? Eventually, I added an empty gas can to the loot in my hatch for the (many) times when I ran out of gas on the side of the road.
    You see, these were pre-cell-phone days, when it was easier to just take care of shit myself than walk all the way to a pay phone, call my dad/mom, and wait for them to come to my rescue, or call AAA and wait for some strange man to come to my rescue. Or worst of all, wait for my mom/dad to call AAA to come to my rescue. I have come to believe, though, that the only modern-day Prince Charming comes in the form of a AAA tow truck driver. Every other Prince Charming is just an impostor who will, no doubt, end up borrowing money from you and eating the leftovers in your fridge you were saving for after work. I guess I’m just a do-it-yourself kind of gal. I’m also way too controlling to be a good damsel in distress.
    So, there was only one other little hiccup: I got in the car one morning to go to school, and the driver-side door wouldn’t close. The damn thing opened mid-ride! Have you ever driven a car while holding the door shut? It’s, like, really hard to do. The door is heavy, especially on a two-door hatchback made in the late 1980s. Turning a corner was torture, and I was extra thankful for my seat belt that day. I had to rethink my usual route in order to turn less. Eventually, I had the door fixed for good, but