goodbye, saturn

it was hard, but it was time.  it was finally time to say goodbye to our dear saturn.  it's been with us for many many years, at times our most reliable car, at times our least...  diana brought this beauty with her into the marriage, it was always looked at as the lesser of our two cars.  the fancier cars came and went, but this thing just kept on truckin!  for the past few months its been getting harder and harder to drive it though, the engine has been getting shakier and the tie rods looser...  with it mostly falling apart on the inside and out, we decided it wasn't really worth putting in the few hundred dollars to fix it up because something else would just fall apart.  it was with sadness we paid our respects. 
we were going to have it picked up in the morning, so i figured i'd take it on one last drive to say goodbye.  i asked ledger if he wanted to go for one last ride and he did, so the two of us headed down and hopped in.  since we were only going to drive around the apartment complexes, i told him he could sit in the front.  oh, he liked that!  as we were toolin around i asked him if he wanted to take the wheel.  'what?!?' he asked, shocked!  'its our last time with the tent car (that's what he calls it since the interior ceiling fabric droops a bit), so we might as well, right?'  oh he was all about that!  he climbed over and sat on my lap, took the wheel, and gave it a try!  his eyes glowed with excitement as he turned the wheel back and forth! don't worry, i didn't let him anywhere near the gas pedal...  we went up and down the paved lots between buildings, i gave him lessons on how to turn and pay attention as he drove.  he didn't heed them all, but hey, he's only six, he's got 10 more years to figure it out!
finally, we said goodbye to it for the last time, and our boy had a great story of how he drove a car when he was six!