Please don't pimp my ride

Monday night, Joey called me to let me know that his business partner had finally located a truck that he wanted and that he had to take the Tahoe down to trade it in. As a brief background, Joey has two business partners – M and R. M is the majority owner and put up most of his own money to get the business started, so typically he ends up earning the most and getting the most perks from the business. M is also Joey’s cousin, so he does a great job of making sure that Joey is pretty well taken care of financially and throws in a few small perks.

One of M’s weaknesses is buying new vehicles. Keep in mind that these vehicles are owned by the company, not by M personally…and R and Joey also have company vehicles as well (but far more modest than anything M would buy himself). The guy is constantly trading in vehicles that have barely been driven in favor of having the newest, best thing on the lot. A few years ago, he started driving a big fancy-schmancy luxury truck and fell in love with it. Personally, Joey and I thought the thing was hideous and a colossal waste of money. He traded in two more times and got the same model each time and ranted and raved about how great they were.

Less than a year ago, he got the model he “really wanted”. And I’m sure you can tell where this is going…the manufacturer changed the body style completely for 2007 so of course M had to immediately track down a new one. He’d only had the last one for less than a year so he gave Joey first dibs on taking that and getting rid of the Tahoe.

We loved the Tahoe. It was perfect for road trips and tailgating, not to mention the fact that the DVD player saved our lives a few times. But the thing had constant, annoying little problems including a teeny antifreeze leak that the dealer could never locate but led to the truck overheating with little notice. It was a huge pain in the ass. So despite our Tahoe love, Joey agreed that he’d take M’s hand-me-down truck. Like he said, this may be his only chance to ever drive something that fancy, so why not?

Joey drove the Tahoe almost 4 hours down to where M had located his new truck…the papers were signed, the Tahoe went bye-bye, and now we are the proud “owners” of a big mac daddy pimped-out luxury truck. I am totally serious when I say that it is such a vulgar display of materialism I have seen in a long time that it’s almost hard to stomach seeing it in our driveway. Don’t get me wrong – it’s beautiful on the inside, with every bell and whistle that M could throw on it, and it rides like a dream. It’s just so not us that it’s not even funny.

We drove it up to my sister’s house on the Fourth for a cookout, and as she peered out the window with me, she whispered, “That looks like something a pimp would ride in!” “Yeah,” I replied, “but remember – it’s FREE. And that’s the mantra I’m going to keep repeating to myself for the next two years…free, free, free….”

So watch out for me on the MTV Cribs edition of fancy cars. Joey will be the one in the purple pimp hat and I’ll be wearing a tube top with some lovely camel-toe inducing shorts. With stripper heels to complete the look, of course.