I had to buy a new car. I don’t know how it is for everyone
else, but the entire process of changing vehicles is a huge and difficult
passage for me. I am madly attached to my vehicle, regardless of how much
trouble it gives to me in its later years. My car is like my favorite pair of
comfortable shoes—it has carried me through many an experience. It sat with me
in cheesy motel parking lots on road trips. It helped carry my loved ones to
hospital emergency rooms. It ushered me to concerts, summer festivals, family
reunions, wedding receptions and school events. It also joined in a number of
somber funeral processions. My car is like a witness to my life. And letting go
of it is like saying goodbye to an old friend—fraught with sadness, anxiety and
uncertainty about what comes next.
Another anxiety-producing event was removing all my personal
effects from my old car. And since I had the car for such a long time, it
turned out to be a time capsule of all the intervening years. Repair receipts,
old parking slips, theater stubs, reward cards from stores, favorite CDs, small
cologne containers, half-rolls of Tums, a pepper spray, spare tissues. The
things we keep in our cars to make us comfortable are very telling. Some people
keep guns in their glove compartments. Some people keep emergency snacks. You
probably keep something in your glove box you’d rather people not know about.
The collection makes one think of George Carlin’s old comedy routine about
“stuff,” whittling down your personal “stuff” into smaller and smaller bits to
carry along with you as you go about your life. Your car carries a micro-supply
of “stuff” you feel you need as you travel down the road.
Then, there’s the issue of choosing a new car. I don’t need
to tell you that buying a new car is a major expense. Payment for a car has to
be carefully structured into your household budget or disaster ensues. The
price of a new car is often at great odds with what you would like. Your final
choice is often a significantly scaled-down version of what you first hoped to
have. On top of that, so many of the car models look remarkably similar—it
almost doesn’t matter what make of car you like. You may as well go for the
cost and whatever consumer rating companies recommend—unless you are willing to
spend the amounts needed for a truly remarkable vehicle. I’m not. My car will
always be a method of getting me from here to there. It is not an expression or
gratification of my ego. I’d rather spend the money on clothes. Or a vacation.
Or new carpeting for my home, which my dogs always destroy in one way or
another.
The current trend toward loading the car with all sorts of
electronics is disturbing for some of us purist car drivers. I don’t know how
many electronic views I’m going to need for backing up—one seems sufficient.
And having everything “syncing up” with my phone seems unnecessary, or even
reckless. I’m certain I will not be using about 50 percent of the features on
the car. I’m not sure if these features are adding to the cost of vehicles.
Maybe they are so cheap to produce, they just throw them in. But I don’t really
think people find them necessary—or even helpful. But hey—thanks for including
them, I guess. And another thing, all these features make reading the owner’s
manual a laborious task that takes up too much of my free time.
The process of negotiating the price of the car seems to
have been cleaned up a bit from previous eras. You no longer feel like you’re
going into hand-to-hand combat with the dealership salesperson. Salespeople are
much nicer now, overtly straightforward, even solicitous—so much so, that you
come out feeling, “Oh, I don’t feel beat up—I must have been screwed over in
some clever, underhanded way.” But I do appreciate their effort to make the
process more painless.
So, now, I have a new car. Like all relationships, we have
started out on tenuous terms. We don’t know each other’s little habits, and we
don’t entirely trust each other yet. That will take time. It will take the
experiencing of good times and bad, sickness and health, laughter and tears.
I’m sure we will have words, vented in momentary anger. There will probably be
some close calls where my car comes through for me. There always are. I will
probably spend anxious moments in a repair shop, praying for its recovery. Car
owners always do. Right now, it’s all new car smell and fears about that first
scratch. I eagerly await the time when we can relax and be comfortable
together.
I may be too emotionally wrapped up in my vehicles. Well—you
know how it is.
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