And so it was christened. I had never really thought anything about the color of the Datsun until that very moment, but it really did look like poop.

BD served me well my freshman year at Valparaiso. I was the only one of my friends that had a car and since there wasn’t a whole lot to do in that sorry little town, we used him to go find fun elsewhere.  

But I mostly drove him back and forth from Valparaiso, Indiana, to Chicago and downstate Illinois to my hometown of Normal.

Now that I think about it, Mom and Dad probably gave me BD so I could go visit John and come home. Plus, my sister had a car at college and my parents wanted to be fair.

When I transferred to Northwestern the fall of my sophomore year, I brought BD with me to Evanston. Parking was at a premium, so I was constantly moving BD from one spot to the next, hoping that he wouldn’t get towed.

Then winter came.

“What the hell is this?” I looked at the fresh dent in BD’s hood one cold Sunday morning. It was the shape of a beer keg. I had parked BD behind a small house-like campus residence hall that wasn’t far from the sorority quad. “Boys,” I thought. “Guess I won’t park here anymore.”

I found another nearby lot and safely put BD there. Or so I thought. 

After a big snow, I came out to dig BD out and found another dent – this time in the front of the hood. It was exactly the shape of a snowplow. “Poor BD,” I thought. “He’s really taking a beating.”

BD made it through the winter but not another year at Northwestern. He was replaced by a red Honda Prelude, which was much more fun to drive..