Car,
It’s not cute anymore. It never was, really, but it made for somewhat interesting conversation. “Yeah, it won’t start sometimes. You have to wait ten minutes while the security light blinks and then try again when it goes off. And then if it doesn’t start, wait ten more minutes. Repeat until the fucker gets going.” Somewhat interesting. Sort of like saying, “Yeah, in February the gas tank gets infested with ladybugs,” or, “When I bought it, it came with a pile of children’s clothing under the spare tire in the trunk.” Somewhat interesting.
You’re supposed to start. You have to start. You’re a car. You have three main jobs — start, move, stop. You flub any of those and you’ll find yourself rusting and getting pissed on by a junkyard dog, I guarantee it.
And yet, you play these games with me. You run like a beaut for weeks and weeks (aside from that awful grinding noise your brakes are making these days that a mechanic has assured me, little ol’ know-nothing pansy-pants ladyface me, is totally normal) and then suddenly, on a random mid-December Wednesday, you decide to blow your previous record completely out of the water by refusing to start for a consecutive SIX TIMES! That’s a complete HOUR I had to sit and wait for you to start, in ten-minute intervals, before I realized Shit, I am forty minutes late to work and this bitch ain’t starting; guess I better get a ride! And who knows how long you would have continued to not start had I sat there all night and kept trying.
You are fortunate that there are people in this world selfless enough to leave work and come get my ass and get me to where I need to be. Because if there weren’t people like that, I’d have to take the bus. And do you have any idea how dumb I am when it comes to public transportation? I live three miles from work and it would take me, without question, two hours to find my way there. This I know in my heart. I can’t even operate a taxi properly. (Please, hold your suggestions that I walk to and from work. I work evening shift. I live in Midtown Memphis. I reserve the right to ride to work on something faster than my feet. Hell, faster than a bicycle, too.)
But something tells me this time you’re not fucking with me. Because when my lovely, patient ride dropped me off after work in her cute and fully functioning Ford Focus, I tried to start you again. I thought maybe you’d act like one of those interweb passwords — if you enter the wrong password too many times, you just have to wait a while and come back and try later. So try I did. And you grunted. Impotently. And flashed your idiotic little security light at me.
Which means I can’t go to the grocery store. Which means I am PISSED. Because I had my week all planned out. Groceries tonight, gym tomorrow afternoon, laundry and cleaning tomorrow night, Tamara visiting Friday night/Saturday, and so on. But instead, your antics mean that I am going to spend the bulk of my day tomorrow finding a way to get to you a goddamned dealership where I can pay gobs of money to have your electronic guts tinkered with (when they should have been fixed during a recall several years ago that never actually happened). That’s gobs of money I don’t HAVE, Car, and gobs of money that, if I did have, I’d surely like to spend paying my bills and maybe buying some Christmas presents for the lovely and patient people in my life who have to chauffeur me around because of your lazy ass.
GOD, CAR, YOU’RE DRIVING ME TO DRINK.
No pun intended. But seriously, I’m enjoying this Mano a Mano against a silky backdrop of Jai Uttal tunes shipped to me by my favorite nu-Yank hippie, even if I know that tomorrow is going to suuuuuck.
Unless, of course, you start. And keep starting.
But I know better than that.
Suck it,
Lindsey