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Hayden Miller

Carey Perkins

ENG101

9 June 2023

The Corvette

The kitchen is a combination of small and crowded, the air is hot with steam and carries

with it a sense of hustle and bustle one might feel in an overly crowded city. The flurry of noise

in the kitchen is completely unnatural but feels at home where it is. As I walk through the

kitchen door out into a small corner, the artificial unnatural droning of the kitchen is drowned out

by a sea of chatter, the auditory equivalent of tv static filling the air as I wait to spot a recently

vacated table. When I do, I quickly walk to the table and fill my bucket with dishes and uneaten

food, wipe down the table and seats and quickly make my way back to the kitchen to unload it all

into the dishwashers. As a busser I would do this over and over, rinse and repeat for hours,

getting home at 11 then quickly hopping in bed before school the first morning. Any other 16

year-old version of me would think that I was insane and maybe I was, but I had a goal that

nothing was going to get in front of, a Chevrolet Corvette C4.

Ever since the reality of me getting my drivers license came into my head, I knew I

wanted a Corvette. I knew it wouldn’t be easy and it would take a lot of work. The day I turned

16, I started looking for jobs applying just about everywhere. Two days later I stopped at a

Mexican restaurant that had a fiesta themed “now hiring” banner and the day after I walked in

there I was filling out paperwork and starting training. I remember my first day working there,

being shown around while the smell of oil drenched chips and the appetizing smell of salsa

crowded the air. I was quickly taught the basics and let loose. The most difficult part of the job

was not the long hours, the messes that people left or the clean up at the end of the night but the
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way I had to teach myself how to talk to customers and sound normal. Although the long

summer days where I could feel the heat coming off the concrete of the patio into the soles of my

shoes, and the long difficult process of cleaning up at the end of the night were at times almost

unbearable, I never once thought of quitting. After months of working there I realized just how

much my first job had made me mature. I was doing my own laundry, feeding myself and

managing my time better than jobless teenage me ever could have.

A few months later I had a couple thousand dollars saved up and I was scrolling through

Facebook Marketplace when I saw it. It was like the result of my hard work, late nights and

sweat had materialized into my dream car, a 1989 Chevrolet Corvette with a hard to come by

6-speed manual transmission was begging me to come take it for six grand. I would have happily

paid that amount, but it got even better; I somehow worked the guy down to selling it for $3,500

through messaging. I think he saw me as a young kid with a passion and liked that about me, that

I was willing to spend all my money on something any normal person would call junk.

The night I went to see it was one of the best nights of my life. When we got there it was

as if everything I could have ever asked for was in my hands and all I had to do was grab it. I had

my friend who knew how to drive a manual transmission car much better than me take me for a

ride in it and it was like nothing I had ever experienced before. As I sat down into the small

passenger seat I looked around the interior of the car. The smell of old dried out, sun faded

leather rushed into my nose. The red carpeted interior was like a Victorian era bed set,

elaborately decorated but its aging was clear to see, which to me came across as so charming,

like a window into the past. As we drove off, we waited to go around the corner so my parents

would not see us mash the throttle down. When we did, what I experienced was nothing short of

pure euphoric intoxication. I was forced into the back of my seat, the engine screamed with the

wrath of thousands of firestorms happening every second . It was a symphony of excitement,

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shock, fear and amazement. As my friend let off the throttle we slowly turned to each other and

burst out in unstoppable hysterical laughter.

At that moment a path was opened and I immediately jumped on it. This car gave me a

passion and drive to learn and appreciate the complexities and workings of the motor vehicle and

a desire to understand and be able diagnose and repair them. It gave me a future that I'm on my

way to right now. I have a career planned now and my future ahead of me, all because I didn’t

give up just because I didn’t quit when I wasn’t happy. Sticking through all the hard days I had to

work has been the most rewarding choice of my entire life and I will forever keep hard work and

persistence in my life for that reason.