Flipper the Dolphin Car

While going through my room de-junking, I found this delightful gem:

It prompted me to write a list of Flipper the Dolphin Car memories

(You'll see how this relates in a minute...)

• Getting her! Having a car I could drive anywhere I wanted. The freedom that came with it. Owning my first car!
• First real road trip with Camree, Taylor, McKenzie and Nichole (my old roommate) from St.George to Disney Land!!

o   As we were driving, caressing Camree’s hand because I thought it was Bobbie’s

o   As we were leaving Disney Land when it closed, somewhere around 11:00-12:00am. We were completely exhausted from our day, and I went to unlock Flipper via the clicker, and she wouldn’t open… so I used the key and the alarm went bananas. We couldn’t get it to go off. If you used the clicker to lock her, you had to use it to unlock her or the alarm would sound and she wouldn’t start. We tried everything. Finally, we were able to find something that could unscrew the clicker, reset the battery, and we were finally able to leave. Took about 30-45 minutes of just sitting there with the alarm sounding trying to get it to go off. No one came to help, and the kids actually fell asleep in the back waiting.

o   Bobbie was probably 5 went we went. Maybe 6. We made it her “job” to remember where we had parked. We’d quiz her and tell her if she forgot, we wouldn’t be able to find Flipper and we couldn’t get home… the first day I think we parked in Mickey Mouse. So we drilled her about it. The next day, we parked in Donald and drilled her about it as well. The second day, we did our favorite rides again. We went on Indiana Jones, and as we were walking out, everyone was commenting how it seemed different this time than it had the day before (thinking maybe there was different tracks/the settings vary, etc). Bobbie chimes in, “of course it’s different! Today we parked in Donald!” HAHAHAA…

• When I got Flipper and Mom cam home and told the guys what she looked like, how she had a fin on the end, Ramz and Bobbie said, “like Flipper the dolphin?” Which is where she got her name. Camree wrote me an email with all these pictures of “dolphin cars” she found on the internet. Funniest email I think I've ever received.  I printed it out, and have a copy in my journal for that year.
• To commemorate Flipper the Dolphin Car,  Ramz and Bobbie wanted to buy me a dolphin for the car. They forgot to get one in Saudi, so they decided to get one in the airport before I picked them up… but they couldn’t find a dolphin, only a whale. It was some weird material, that was stuffed with little white balls inside (aka – not a stuffed animal). I put the “dolphin” in my car. That summer I was working in St.George at GodFathers pizza. It gets hot in St.George in the summers, especially in a car sitting in the sun... One day I came out of work to find that the sun had caused the “dolphin” to explode!! It exploded down the back and sprayed its contents – little white balls – ALL OVER my car. I cleaned it as best as I could, but some were lodged in the passenger side airbag crevice (on the dashboard) and I could never get them out. I found those balls in my car for years, right up intil I sold it. Since I am a packrat and can't throw out sentimental things, I kept it for years (to be exact, about 7 years... I did throw it out after taking these pictures) and, since it had a giant rip down the back I sewed it up.

• Arabic “Saudi Arabia” with the palm tree on the back window
• Devesh kissing me for the first time, as we were parked above the “D” in St. George.
• Getting all hott and heavy with Devesh in the backseat in the parking garage of the SLC airport across from the entrance, where people were walking back and forth.
• Angie and I deciding in the middle of a Rexburg snowstorm we had to have Cold Stone… the passenger side door wouldn’t open (I made Angie drive) and the windshield wipers were not working, either. It took half an hour to unbury the poor car, and then I had to climb in the back, and over the seat to sit, and then couldn’t get out… we had to stop every hundred yards or so and clear the windshield off…
• Locking myself out at the Idaho State Fair when we were staying at Daren’s house and the AAA guy didn’t come until seriously 1am ish and everyone was up so late and it was so embarrassing.
• Sliding off the road on my way back to Rexburg in the snow… so scary! And all the brush that was all over the underneath…
• Thinking flipper had been stolen when I couldn't find her in the parking lot of my apartment complex after Christmas... one of my roommates had moved her due to snow removal in the parking lot.
• When I locked my keys in the gas tank in California on my road trip with Tatiana.
• When Flipper decided to break down completely that one horrid winter, and it cost over $1000 to fix and I was unemployed and Dad had to pay and I was without a car… wretched.
• How the windows always stopped rolling up and down and I’d have to replace them and it cost a lot of money and was so frustrating! (The driver’s window went out once, the passenger side window twice, and both the back windows once each). 
• When I got locked out dancing at studio 600 with Irma... left my keys on the drivers seat in downtown SLC next to a Mexican taco stand that gathered young hooligans... I went to the car and found the car there, they keys there... thankfully! A window was broken, naturally, so I managed to pull it down and climb through. Thank goodness!
• How there was almost always tape on one of the windows, keeping it up until I could replace it... how one of the windows permanently has tape marks around it. Driving and the tape coming off on the freeway and other places, and the window going down and having to stop a thousand times to pull it back up and tape it once again...
• How the windshield wipers never worked… and the drivers’ side wiper would smack the mirror, and make a horrid thumping sound every time… and sometimes (often…) it would actually get jammed behind the mirror and just stick there making awful noises.
• How Flipper would just not start sometimes… you’d have to sit there and wait and wait until it finally turned. And the first time it did it – when Mom tried to start it… so we towed it behind the truck. And my mom tied the rope to the “insert correct car part here” fluid line. I’m sitting  behind the wheel, and suddenly the rope goes flying out from under the car, and I see that the knot is still tied, which means whatever it was tied to on my car was broken… that was an expensive fix.
• How the blinkers only worked sometimes. That killed me. Merging was so precarious and I looked like such a bad driver.
• How only half of the lights on the display worked, and the mileage lights too
• How the A/C worked maybe 10% of the time… and the button wouldn’t stay on so you’d have to press it a thousand times while driving and it would never turn on…
• How it ran out of oil every other day. The gas went suspiciously fast too.