# The hardest thing to give up

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-thing-to-give-up/923149>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [October 17, 2020, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-thing-to-give-up/923149 "2020-10-17T00:54:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 36

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**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2020, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-hardest-thing-to-give-up/923149/36 "2020-10-19T16:47:54Z")

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> [@lobotomyboy63](#):
>
> Back in about 1987 I was talking to a woman who was beside herself because she’d had an accident in her 1979 Mazda. Because of its age, although the damage wasn’t horrendous it was “totaled,” so insurance handed her a check rather than fixing it.
> 
> What caused her grief was the loss of the car. Nobody was hurt, it wasn’t her fault, the insurance covered its value, etc. No, it was that car. She loved that car. And she wasn’t poor. She could buy a newer, fancier, nicer car, but she didn’t want anything but that car. She could have gone on a quest for another 1979 Mazda—nope, that particular one was hers.
> 
> I don’t think it was her first car or anything. In her eyes maybe it had witnessed her life, a constant through ups and downs. For her it was like losing a prized pet or maybe even a family member.

There’s a scene like this in the movie The Motorcycle Diaries, in which the protagonists are traversing South America on a motorcycle. It’s been a long time since I saw it, but IIRC there’s a scene where the motorcycle has broken down beyond repair; they are forced to get rid of it - and they are in tears as they part company with this machine that had been with them on the entire journey.

**[I sympathized with that scene](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-feeling-of-being-one-w-motorcycle/722131/7)**. In ten years of riding, I had racked up well over 130,000 miles on my first bike, and it was becoming too unreliable to take on long road trips anymore, so I sold it. We had been through a lot of adventures together, and I was indeed a little sad to see it go; I suppose I might have been sadder if I had watched it being hauled off to a scrapyard instead of being ridden away by a happy new owner.

I was sadder about my car, a G37 which I totaled it due to some major stupidity on my part. Purchased brand new, it was the nicest car I had ever owned, and it was unique; by the time I crashed it, Infiniti was no longer making any car with a manual transmission, and I didn’t want to buy someone else’s used car. I only had a few years with that car - not a decade like I had with my bike - but I was plenty sad to see it go. Not sure if I’ll ever have another manual.

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