What my car may have looked like at some point in the distant past.
As many of you are no doubt aware, I’ve moved residences recently. Where I was once a scant five minutes from work (about 1.5 miles) I now have the ludicrous travel time of some twenty minutes, or about 6 miles, to sit in a cubicle and goggle at the fact I have not yet been fired.* As many of you are also no doubt aware, much to the hilarity of everyone, my car is…not the optimal method of conveyance over any significant distance. It’s a 1990 New Yorker and the odometer stopped clocking at around 250,000 miles well before I purchased her for $400 some three years ago. The engine has a tendency to get rather warm owing to the fact that the fan doesn’t work, which is only problematic in the summer when you have to run the heater to keep the vehicle from overheating. I don’t take it on the highway because she starts to shudder like an old man with a voracious chill at around 55 mph. The left turn signal doesn’t work precisely right, in that you have to toggle it manually to make it blink and the driver’s side window is permanently stuck in the down position. At least, until last weekend.
One of the many fringe benefits of dating my fiancé is that her brother-in-law is a mechanic, not to mention the fact that she forces me to do things I should do but valiantly refuse to do such as acquiring a valid driver’s license and, as was the case last weekend, drive my behemoth of a car the ungodly 12 miles out to Billings so her sister’s husband could fix my window. Nobody was more surprised than me when the vehicle made the trip (significant portions of the drive are 60 mph and one lane) without incident. We dropped the car off and her brother-in-law not only fixed the window** but also replaced a $2 bulb which repaired the left turn signal. I must confess, I hardly know what to do with myself now that I have what appears to be a legally functioning automobile. I’m as giddy as a budding school girl, I must say.
Of course, there is still the issue of the car’s body resembling something that didn’t place terribly well in a demolition derby, and the back windshield is a plastic sheet sort of rammed in there because the glass was broken out, and the interior is less than pristine due to years of rain coming through the open window and flooding the trash that is now sort of forever affixed to my floorboard, and the passenger side door only opens a crack because part of the body panel is jammed against it, and the brakes will need replaced pretty soon if I do not wish to become interpretive art on Kansas Expressway, but…what was my point again?
Oh yeah; anybody want to buy a car? With all the repairs I’ve made to it I could let it go for, oh, say $800? I’ll even throw in the flat spare tire in the trunk, no charge! No pushing please; form an orderly line to the right.
What's your car worth, suck'a?
*Office Survival Tip: If you suddenly see everyone in your department avoiding eye contact while suddenly going to a meeting to which you have not been invited, you’re getting fired, Poncho.
**That is to say, it is now permanently in the “up” position but cannot be rolled down.
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