Sometimes, in the Metro parking lot, someone will leave a
“ticket to heaven” gospel tract on my car windshield. Though well intentioned, I find the “ticket
to heaven” so irksome that if I wasn’t a Christian already, the “ticket to
heaven” would probably accomplish the opposite of its intended effect, causing me
to dig my heels into the filthy mire of stubborn unbelief, and giving me a
ticket straight to hell. The customary “ticket to heaven” is probably
why it took me a while to notice that someone had left an actual, personal note on my car windshield.
Actually, Vince noticed the note and brought it to my
attention the next day. It read:
I was sitting in my
car and saw the person who hit your car.
It was a woman in a red Acura with the license plate number of
xxxxxx. After she hit your car, she
moved her car into another space. Call
me if you need a witness.
What!?!? There’s
damage to my car and I didn’t even notice!?!?
That’s not so surprising, actually. Let’s see — there are
the indentations on the rear bumper from when I misjudged and scraped a parking
lot pole, but there wasn’t sufficient damage to warrant spending my $500
deductible. And if you squint your eyes,
the newly added indentations with telltale red paint residue left by the red
Acura kind of blends into the additional bumper damage that’s related to another
note that someone left on my car windshield months earlier.
On that day I was shopping at Staples without my cell phone
and Vince and I, pursuing our varied shopping interests, got separated. When I couldn’t find him, I went out to the
car to see if I could find him waiting for me.
He wasn’t there, but I found a note left on my windshield. “Oh,” I thought tenderly, feeling warm fuzzies
arise in the core of my belly. “My sweet
husband must have left a note telling me where to find him and, no doubt, he
added something loving, like he usually does.”
I fetched the note with a half-smile on my face, expecting directions to
an affectionate reunion with my thoughtful spouse and, at the very least, a “Te
quiero” sign-off. I would have to
remember to kiss him, squeeze his arm, and bask in the warm glow of knowing
that I have a husband who yearns for my company and cares enough to write loving
notes in anticipation of our reunion. Instead,
the unsigned note said:
“Don’t you know how to park!?”
It was like a stab to the heart. Why would someone go to the trouble to leave
a mean and accusatory note on my windshield just to spread the venom of their
hyper-critical nastiness? I examined my
parking job. It wasn’t perfect, positioned
a little more to one side than the other, but it wasn’t bad and the parking
spot had ample room. I was upset and mystified
until I noticed the damage on my rear bumper.
Suddenly, I understood. No doubt,
someone had hit my car and, in a false display for witnesses, left a note to
make it appear as if they were leaving contact information. But it was just a ruse coupled with a rude
and mean-spirited attempt to blame the victim.
So now, here was this new note from a Good Samaritan letting
me know that someone had added damage to the already damaged bumper of my 2001
Mercury Sable station wagon with almost 200,000 miles on the odometer, or as I like
call it, the “silver bullet.” A part of
me wanted to just forget about it, especially since I will probably drive the
car into the ground until it’s good for nothing but parts anyway. But the fact
that the hit and run driver relocated to avoid accountability made me unwilling
to let it go.
On the other hand,
even though I’d like to drive a nice-looking car, at what point do I have to
relinquish a desire to have an old car look new and unblemished?
In my experience, a
car’s lifespan is about 10 years or 200,000 miles, before something so major or
systemic goes wrong that you have to essentially euthanize the car. After that,
it can become dangerous to drive it, like the time my son was driving our old
Pontiac Bonneville, hit a bump, and the entire rusted out steering system
disengaged and dropped out of the bottom of the car (thank God, he was fine, but the car was
not. And I really miss that car.) The silver bullet is pushing the outer edges
of the longevity stats. Spending time
and money on cosmetics for my car would be like spending lots of money on a
boob job for an 85-year-old. In keeping
with this analogy, my car also hogs gas, so it would be like buying a boob job
for an 85-year-old who is also spending all my money by eating me out of house
and home. Is it really worth the trouble
and expense?
It reminded me of something Vince said recently. “Before we
die, we should have a really nice car, just for once in our lives,” he
announced. “We deserve it.”
I knew he was kidding, mocking the deluded sense of
entitlement that often spurs human beings to spend money on bad
investments. After all, even if I had
30 grand or more sitting around to buy a new car, there would be much smarter
ways to invest my money than in 3,000 pounds of plastic and metal that can do
nothing but lose value.
Don’t get me wrong — I don’t begrudge people driving nice
cars and if I had money to spare I would probably consider it my moral obligation
to drive an expensive car in order to reward manufacturing excellence. Besides, there’s a part of me that’s fed up
with driving beater cars and yearns for the snazzy sleekness of new wheels. When
you’re young you can justify having to drive a crummy car as a temporary
inconvenience but, at our ages, we both know that it probably doesn’t get any
better than this. If we don’t have nice
cars by now it’s doubtful we ever will. Still, since I don’t have money to spare, I’m
sort of a prisoner of my own practicality, but that’s better than being a
prisoner to debt. Eventually, I will have to buy a new car, but it will be a
practical, used car, not something sleek and new.
My 20-something neighbor used to own a black Honda Accord
that he treated lovingly, washing and polishing it every weekend. I would love to buy a car like that. But
suddenly, the Honda disappeared, replaced by a new-looking Mercedes, which the
neighbor described as “sportier.” Yep, I’m guessing about $30-40,000 sportier
than the Honda. Now, every weekend, the
neighbor lovingly washes his Mercedes and, in a neighborhood with a dearth of parking,
he deliberately takes up two parking spaces in order to avoid having an
adjoining car scrape or scratch his temporarily perfect specimen. I’m guessing that “sportier” is a euphemism
for “sexier” or at least more of a chick magnet, if you want to attract a woman
who seeks those kinds of accoutrements— at least until she finds out that he
still lives with his parents. As far as
I can tell, he’s still waiting for the Mercedes to work its magic.
Oh well, at least I’ve advanced beyond the car I drove in
the '90s with the plastic dinosaurs and other assorted toys glued into the car’s
front grill because I couldn’t afford to fix it. And at least I’m not driven by
anxiety to have my clunker take up two parking spaces. Like Janis Joplin sang, “When you’ve got
nothin’, you’ve got nothin’ to lose.”
The silver bullet has served me well and, like me, she has a few miles
on her. We might want to look as spiffy
as we can as long as we can, and we’re not quite ready for the scrap heap yet. But at some point, the silver bullet’s dings
are like my crow’s feet -- evidence of
endurance. We may want to look as good
as possible as long as possible, but we’ve given up on looking anything close
to pristine. The silver bullet and I are
two of a kind -- past our prime but hanging in there – and you’ll just have to
accept us both dents and all.
No boob jobs yet for either me or the silver bullet -- but then again, I'm not ruling anything out.
