“Oh my gosh did you see Jake’s new haircut?” one of my friends gushed during lunch.

“Yes, he is so cute!”

They went on and on about boys while I stayed quiet. I was too busy thinking about something else to pay attention: Cars.

Muscle cars, sports cars—the type of cars that will make your neck turn when you see them pass by. I would spend hours at night doing research and watching YouTube videos and before I knew it, it was midnight. But when I first got interested, I kept it to myself. None of my friends are interested in cars and my parents and brother weren’t very intrigued by it either. 

I was intimidated. 

All my life I grew up thinking that cars were for boys and girls couldn’t like that stuff, which is why I shied away from taking any automotive classes in school during my first three years. It also felt isolating, I couldn’t relate to my friends. 

“Did you watch the new season of Keeping Up With The Kardashians?” my friend asked me. 

“No, I was watching Formula 1 racing all night.”

“What is that?” my friend questioned, making me sigh.

Eventually, I couldn’t hold it in. 

I started pointing out cool cars to my family and friends when we were driving around. Then it went to the different types of engines and how much horsepower they made, it became too much and my parents caught on about my obsession.

“How do you know all of this?” My Dad had asked me after we spotted a Dodge Challenger out in a snowstorm and I told him that Dodge was the only muscle car to offer an all-wheel drive option, but it’s only in their SXT and GT trims.

“I’ve been doing some research,” I admitted shyly. 

Once it was out, I couldn’t stop talking about it. My parents and I had gone down to Kentucky for a wedding one weekend and the whole drive I was pointing out Dodge Challengers and Ford Mustangs whenever we saw them. It made the eight-hour car ride feel only like one. By the time the wedding was over, nearly everyone we talked to knew about my preoccupation.

When I told my parents about my dream car, a Dodge Challenger, my dad reminded me that my Grandpa used to own one. I had nearly forgotten that my Grandpa was more crazy about cars than me. Soon I was receiving pictures of cars from every car show my Grandpa went to, and I kept him up-to-date on all the news about the muscle car scene. He is the one person who will understand all of my nonsense about “6.4 liter, 8 cylinder engines.” 

“What do you think about Dodge discontinuing the V8 engines and making them electric?” My grandpa had asked when I stopped over to drop something off. 

“I get why they are doing it, since the fines were getting too much, but it’s a shame.”

“The Challenger Demon 170 trim was on the cover of ‘Motor Trend’ this month, it was really interesting, it makes what? 1000 horsepower?”

“1025,” I corrected him, having taken the magazine from my Dad to read through it. “It has one of the fastest quarter-mile times for combustion engine cars.”

“I heard you’re trying to convince your parents to buy a Challenger, how’s that going?”

“I’m trying to sell them on the surprising safeness of it but I don’t think it’s working,” I laughed. 

What I thought was going to be a 15-minute visit, turned into almost two hours of talking about cars of all sorts. 

“I know of a car show in a couple of weeks, wanna go?”

“Yes!”