Car talk....

I’m not good with cars.

I’m not good with a lot of things but I’m especially not good with cars.

I once brought my car into the shop because of a mysterious noise, only to be told it was coming from the empty soda can rattling under the driver’s seat. As a teen the car I was driving once caught fire on the highway because I thought “oil change” simply meant you dumped oil on the hole marked “oil”. If asked to pop my hood, I’d have to google how. I could probably change a tire if severely pressed, but Vegas would definitely create odds. Last year I managed to jump-start a car (after googling the - + thing, because I was repeatedly told that if I got this wrong I’d end up like Ace Rothstein in the movie Casino), and for days afterwards I strutted around like one of the Magliozzi brothers.

When people ask me what kind of car I have I’ll say something like “a red one” and everybody laughs nervously, waiting for the punchline. But there is none. At least 3 times a year I’ll go searching for my car in a parking lot and attempt to get in the wrong one. If the door happens to be unlocked, I’ll wonder why my key doesn’t work. Eventually, I’m going to snap my key off in somebody else’s ignition, and won’t that be an interesting story to tell the cops?

I dread taking a car in for any type of service because I know I’m immediately going to be asked a question I don’t know the answer to, like “what kind of car is it?” I simply rely the mercy of mechanics, because I can surely be fleeced in 1000 different ways.

All I know about the assortment of lights on my dashboard is that they all mean something bad, and that one seemingly triggers the other. The tire pressure light is the bane of my existence. As soon as it pops on I think to myself….”where the fuck am I gonna find 5 quarters?”, because this is 2023 and air isn’t free*. After scrounging floors and pockets, I’ll top off the offending tire, only to have the light come back on 3 days later. Eventually, I’ll bring the car in assuming the tire has a leak, only to be told that the tire is fine and dandy, and it must be due to the “temperature change”, which is what they tell you when they want you to leave.

(* I discovered that air IS free in Louisville, Kentucky. I was there in a rental car and within 10 minutes of taking the car out of the airport lot the low tire pressure light comes on, because the car knew it was me. So I find a gas station and was simply giddy to find that they simply give away free air down south. It was all I could talk about when I got home.)

My brain doesn’t work the way normal guy brains work. If I’m getting gas and the pump requires me to enter my zip code, I’ll usually have to text my wife, because, while my mind is filled with libraries of data covering things like all the major wars of the 19th and 20th century and the dialog to the movie “Jaws”, I cannot regurgitate my zip code on demand. There is no room for it up there. But if you want to discuss the tactics of the 20th Maine during the 2nd day of the Battle of Gettysburg, I’m your man!

According to….well…..everybody…..when it comes to cars you can’t trust….well….anybody. Whoever and wherever I take my car is inevitably denigrated as a flagrant rip-off artist…..akin to the tobacco-dribbling guys who changed Chevy Chase’s tires in “Vacation”, replying “how much you got?” to the question “what do I owe you?”. They are all sharks who smell blood in the water. And I’m chum.

But then again, everybody I know has their very own top-secret, angelic mechanic. It’s suggested that I call them, and “tell them I sent you”. Which I do. This makes no difference since mechanics stopped returning phone calls around the same time doctors did. At this point the only way to get a good mechanic’s attention is to drive your car through the side of their garage.

I must say it’s mighty difficult getting 700+ words out of a subject that I know absolutely nothing about, but then again, like I said, my brain works differently than yours. THIS I can do. Cars I cannot.

Also, and I swear this is true. In the midst of writing this, I needed to run out to pick up a prescription. My car won’t start.

In a bit…

—tf