When we first bought it we loved it.  It had slick lines.  It smelled new even though it had something like 80,000 km.  It was fast with reliable cruise control.  It was reasonably good on gas.  It was the kind of car that you felt good-looking in.

Oh, how far we've come.  It has seen two babies home from the hospital.  It has witnessed innumerable back seat fights.  It has been the subject of Eye Spy and the arena for Who Am I?, Paddidle or the Rusnak invented travel points game (involving Canada flags, water towers, McDonalds, churches and graveyards). It has hosted many nights at the Hanover Drive-In amid piles of blankets and spills of popcorn and chips and drinking boxes.  It has heard giggles at the car wash and it has plugged the vacuum with it's excess of stale donut pieces and hardened french fries.  It has witnessed the cacophony choir of Mommy and Daddy singing with the radio while Zander turns up his DSi volume with Liam spouting off quotes from Toy Story and Noa tossing about a "La La La," trying to keep up with it all.  Oil changes.  Spark plugs.  Brakes.  Transmission.  Thousands of dollars in gas.

A piece of the wiper mechanism has come loose and bangs against the windshield.  The fan control buttons have snapped off.  The gearshift light that shows the P R N D down the left hand side has blown.  There is an incessant clicking coming from somewhere in the front console - it sounds like the blinker but it isn't.  A cancerous rust has been slowly eating through the paint job.  At least two speakers are blown.  The passenger side mirror is missing.  The driver side automatic window is finicky and sometimes doesn't work at all.  The cup holders are sludgy from too many Tim Horton's coffee's.  The horn doesn't work no matter how hard you push on the button.  The high beams are as bright as the low beams.  A super-size porcupine met it's untimely demise beneath our front end which is now a mess of smashed bumper and plastic and dented radiator sporting tell-tell quills that scream, "THIS CAR IS A MURDERER!"  There is a dent on the front driver side fender from being hit by a deer - that's right, it ran into us, we were stopped.  It is the ugliest car in the WalMart parking lot even when we're parked beside an old station wagon.

I no longer feel good-looking when I drive it.  I hide behind big sunglasses and pretend I don't see the raised eyebrows when people pass.

The insurance adjuster called this morning.  We had dropped it off at the auto body shop, planning to have the front end repaired.  He said it wasn't worth fixing.  They can't justify the cost.  They're writing it off.  Scott's stressing.  He's going to try and fight it.  I'm thinking maybe it's a blessing.  I'm thinking it may be time to usher in the age of the Mini Van.  I'm also thinking that maybe we should dump insurance and buy a horse instead.

Rest in peace 2002 Grand Am of blue-green rusty sheen.  For six years you have cradled those I love most with stained seats and sticky seat belts along these busy streets of our life.  I was sure we would drive you until your tires fell off or you blew up (which I expected every time we zoomed along a 400 series highway and you started to vibrate), but your ticking tourettes and near 300,000 kilometers have beaten you.  Farewell, my friend.  And good riddance.  May your successor be everything you weren't.