Warmth Is Sacred To My People

I loathe car dealerships.

There's something terribly sterile about them- and not in the welcoming "Come in, hang up your hat, allow me to save your life," way characteristic of hospitals. (Yes, I do enjoy medical habitats, in general, and while I will politely nod and smile sympathetically while you describe your fears of doctor's offices and medical centers, I will not truly understand whatever it is that you're talking about- unless we're talking about anyplace inhabited by a dentist.  Dentists rank right up there with rabbits on the list of Creatures Not To Be Trusted.)  Car dealerships are all silvery surfaces and the walls are plastered with advertisements for their cars, which makes no sense whatsoever- I'm already there, okay?  You got me.  I know of no one who wanders into car dealerships, past all the actual cars to aimlessly peruse the photographs on the walls before jumping and saying, "HEY.  Maybe I should buy a car today!  I like this one, right here on the wall."  Get yourself to Hobby Lobby and buy a giant $10 post-impressionist print, Car Dealership People, and I'll be a lot less scowly in your place of business.

Even the people that work there hate it.  At least I'm guessing they do, which is a reasonable assumption, given the car salesman I saw standing just outside the building at the dealership I was at a few weeks ago, on a day that had already seen its high temperature of -2 come and go.  Nobody chooses to leave a place with temperatures sustainable to life unless it's simply unbearable.  Poor, miserable car guy.  I bet he could do with a daily dose of Almond Blossoms.

The reason I found myself at a (terrible, horrible, no good, very bad) dealership was because we were looking for a car.  To purchase.  And believe it or not, we, and by we, I of course mean Derek, had already researched a boatload of cars and didn't have to look at the gallery of photographs on the walls of the dealership to choose one.

I won't bore you with the details of all the test drives and negotiating and blah blah blah (in part because I was blessedly absent for most of it, and in part because no one should have to fear death by boredom as a result of reading this blog), but in the end we ended up buying a new (to us) car to replace Derek's old one.

It is a nice car.  I have not yet entirely decided how I feel about it.

Most of this is, I admit, fear of disloyalty to our old car.  As a result, I find myself saying things like "Oh, look at that, when you try to turn up the volume it actually works 100% of the time.  No one likes a showoff, New Car," and "Some cars don't feel the need to have fancy things like actual knobs and buttons for adjusting the heat and air conditioning, some cars are content with stabby metal parts because their plastic knobs broke and fell off long ago.  Don't get too big for your britches, New Car," and "So your windshield wipers work.  Big deal, New Car," and "I know of some cars who aren't afraid to make all manner of terrifying noises and can shimmy like a flapper in a spangled dress and make you fear for your life all at the same time- let me tell you New Car, there is almost nothing adventurous about driving you, unlike some other cars who helped me discover that I really am a strong, courageous woman every time I sat in them."

Then I discovered the glory that is heated seats and switched loyalties fast enough to make Benedict Arnold's head spin.

The Tercel

Brace yourselves:  I'm going to talk about cars today.  Be assured it will most likely never ever happen again.  Not because I don't like them or I have a religious belief against them, but because in general I just don't really care about them.

Oh, except for my first car.

It was blue.  A pretty little blue Toyota that had been my dad's.  I remember when we went and bought the car (in large part because it was, up to that point in my life, one of the most intensely boring days I had ever experienced).  The poor sales guy kept showing my parents different cars, and my dad would stubbornly repeat variations on the theme, "I want a car that will get me from point A to point B.  That's it."

And that's what they got.  It was (is, it is, because don't kid yourself: that car is still running, and will probably run until the end of time) a little 4-cylinder, stick shift, two-door Tercel with dark vinyl seats (the better to retain heat in the summer so as to give you immediate contact burns on any surface of skin you were foolish enough not to protect from the car), no air conditioning, no power steering, no power anything, for that matter, no right side-view mirror, no radio, no speakers, no clock, no nothing car.

I loved that car.

It was peppy.  It whipped around corners beautifully.  It was as reliable as the sun (more on the sun in just a moment), got great gas mileage, and the one amenity it featured, heat, worked so well in the winter it was like it was trying to make up for the fact that it lacked pretty much everything else other cars have.

So maybe it wasn't the most powerful car in the world.  I've heard another Tercel owner compare the sound of the engine to that of a lawn mower.  So what?  It moved with alacrity when I pressed down on the gas pedal.  It's not like my life was The Fast and the Furious.

So maybe my affectionate nickname for it was The Easy-Bake Oven.  I remember getting in the car to drive the five minutes it took me to get to work as a carhop at Sonic, and arriving in clothes quite literally drenched in sweat.  When it's well over 100 degrees outside, you're sitting on dark vinyl seats, and the cooking implement isn't so much a light bulb as the sun, it's going to get a little hot.  So what?  As a carhop, I spent half my shift outside, anyway.  (This was a little different when I started working in a drugstore.  On the very hottest days, I would bring a different shirt to change into when I got to work, and hang my sopping wet shirt up to drip-dry while I worked.  I'm pretty sure they loved me there.)  I had friends who said things like WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THIS CAR and I HAVE NEVER BEEN THIS HOT IN MY LIFE and OH JEEZ I FEEL SICK.  It was a car, wasn't it?  Teenagers.  So dramatic.

It was because of this car that I was so confused and not a little cranky when we moved to Connecticut.  We lived in a relatively working-class neighborhood, not at all what you'd call affluent, especially by Connecticut standards, but there was a high school just a couple blocks away from our condo, and that school parking lot was full of nice, new cars with brand names like BMW and Lexus.  What the heck?  This gave me lots of opportunities for curmudgeonly grumbling about Youth Entitlement and Kids These Days (it just occurred to me I was the ripe old age of 21 when I moved there- at this point I could either label myself as an "old soul" or just accept that I've always been a little cranky).

Now, thankfully, we're back in the midwest, where the school parking lots are full of bikes and old trucks and, my favorite, an old, rusty, beater car that has a bumper sticker that reads "Don't be fooled by my car- my treasure is in heaven."

My point?  I don't really have one.  Except to say that even if you have money coming out your ears, please don't get your kid a nice car when they first start driving.  I am happy with just about any car I drive now, I don't care if it's pretty, I don't care if it doesn't have power-whatever- I just want it to get me from point A to point B.  (Although, I'm not gonna lie, I might cry on the day when I finally get to drive a manual transmission vehicle again.  I feel very strongly about those.)