We had two family cars when I started middle school. Mom had a cream colored station wagon with a wide stripe of faux wood paneling on the side. Dad had an early 80s Toyota Corolla, which we affectionately called “the crapmobile.” It was medium-brown with rusty edges, and with its squat boxy frame it looked like a pile of crap. It was also kind of a crappy car, but it always got us where we needed to go.
We’d joke about the crapmobile back then but it was all in good fun. Who really cared what kind of car you had anyway? But that changed for me when I entered seventh grade. That was the year I left public school and started going to the best private school in town.
I wish I would’ve been proud of the crapmobile when I started at my new school. Instead I felt only shame.
But now, almost thirty five years later, I feel nothing but pride for it. I think often of the crapmobile and what it represents in my life. I see it as a character in an important chapter of my family’s American dream story. For me that story started with us living in an attic above my Cuban grandparents with my nursery in the closet. From there things kept changing seemingly all the time, with my family elevating itself slowly but surely through hard work and risk taking, and all four of us kids ended up with so many advantages that our parents never had.
Stories like this inevitably involve big moments of transition when a significant step forward is taken. As new opportunities opened themselves to us, so did new ways of life, but that also meant leaving old ways of life behind. These transitions, as wonderful as they are, can also be jarring and filled with complex emotions, some of which I’m still grappling with to this day.
The crapmobile was there front and center for what I view as the biggest of these transitions in my family’s history, which is when I, the oldest of four kids, started going to this truly amazing private school. I still can’t get my head around how this came to be, but with determined parents, an extremely generous financial aid package, and a natural fluency with numbers that had me taking math classes at the local University while I was in sixth grade, the stars aligned and I was accepted. All of my siblings ended up going to the same school too, and it’s hard to overstate how impactful this was for our family, my parents included. There was no further we could rise when it came to schooling. We were on the best path that was out there and there was no going back.
My new school was a totally foreign world that I was beyond excited to enter. For one, it was cool to be smart and I loved that. But it also intimidated the hell out of me. It seemed that only the distinguished and wealthy families of Buffalo sent their kids there and we definitely weren’t that. I started feeling a lot of embarrassment about things like the crappiness of our family car, and the fact that we bought our school clothes at Kmart. A lot of the other kids drove to school in BMWs and Mercedes and wore Polo clothes. I felt lesser than because of this. I felt that I didn’t and wouldn’t fit in.
Even though there were a lot of rich kids there, I was clearly oversimplifying things. I was also judging people for having more than me just as I assumed they’d judge me for having less. As it turns out I made some of the greatest friendships of my life at that school. I was loved and appreciated and I got a wonderful education. It was an incredible community of people with good wholesome values who were committed to giving back.
But that doesn’t mean my feelings of shame and unworthiness weren’t valid. Of course they were. It’s hard to be the new kid and it’s even harder when you feel like you don’t fit in.
On my first day of seventh grade when my dad dropped me off in the morning I was so unbelievably embarrassed to hop out of the crapmobile. I figured all the other kids were staring at me disapprovingly. I felt totally self-conscious and humiliated.
On the second day I actually had my father drop me off down the block because I didn’t want anyone to see me get out of that car ever again. It hurts my heart thinking of this now as the feelings were so intense. Looking back I also feel for my father at that time as his oldest son was ashamed to be dropped off at school and that must have felt shitty. But we never really talked about it. Instead I just buried the feelings like I’ve done so many times in my life. How I wish we would’ve talked about it more back then.
Things went on like this for some time until one day my father brought home a new black and grey Mazda MPV. It was a space age looking minivan and it was far and away the nicest car we had ever owned. By no means was it a luxury car. It was a minivan after all. But it was new and modern and clean and it was ours.
I was also thrilled that the crapmobile was gone forever.
But the truth is that the crapmobile never really left. It’s spirit has stayed with me and I think it always will.
A strange thing is that until I went to private school I always felt like one of the fortunate ones, both money-wise and otherwise. My family wasn’t well off by any means, but compared to many of the kids at public school we seemed rich. We paid full price for school lunches. I had two parents at home. I never felt like I was lacking anything. I also got driven to school in the crapmobile while many kids had no mobile whatsoever.
The same was true compared to my extended family, many of whom really struggled to get by and still do. I loved these folks but I also felt disconnected from them, not because I felt superior or anything like that, but because I remember them making a big deal out of what we had in a way that made me feel like I wasn’t one of them. I remember my great-aunt always calling my Dad Mr. Moneybags and meaning it. How did that make any sense? There was never any money for luxuries at our house, and of course we had shown up in the crapmobile.
When I got to private school it was the opposite. I felt poor and unworthy.
I still have a chip on my shoulder about this. I still don’t know where I fit in. It’s complicated.
It’s all so relative too. No matter what you have there will be people out there with more and with less. And nothing stays the same. People are always moving up and down the ladder of wealth like my family did.
In about a month my son is going to start at the same private school I went to. It’s all coming full circle, although circumstances are different. I’m more financially secure than my family was when I was a kid. I also firmly believe now that loving who you are is so much more important than fitting in if fitting in means burying your feelings or your story.
I want my son to know about the crapmobile. I want him to learn from what I experienced. But even more I want him to feel comfortable talking to me about whatever his version of the crapmobile is.
We can transcend these feelings if we acknowledge them and talk openly about them. And sometimes we end up loving the same thing that caused us so much pain.