the humbling automobile

I bet you can't find one person who wouldn't agree with the idea that the sight of a ferrari or mercedes screams "confidence." Yes, confidence. Well, my friends, I happen to be that one person. To me, confidence is driving my car out in public.

You see, I drive a Ford Escort from the year 2000. Not bad, right? Let's throw in a cracked windshield. When I say cracked, I mean a thick gash across the entire window. Everyone's got spare change in their car, correct? Well so do I. Except I have a habit of only drinking out of leaky glasses in my car, so my cupholders are filled to the brim with gooey leakage. And in this gooey leakage, one can always find a handful of coins. Now let's just say that you're going to the beach. You park at the meter. You need a dollar in change just so you can park your car for 15 minutes. I have actually considered reaching into my goo-filled cupholders for change...but alas...the change is 50 cent coins, and arrowheads. Nothing useful whatsoever to the society in which we live.

Oh, confidence. It takes a lot of confidence (and sometimes arrogance) to drive my car around in public.

Getting pulled over in my car is always extremely entertaining in itself. If I'm not speeding, I don't know why I am getting pulled over. Depending on the level of prick-ness that consumes the cop that pulls me over, there are a list of things he could give me a ticket for.

1) Cracked windshield (previously discussed)
2) Broken turn signal (oh it signals all right...the whole thing is about to die out so it clicks about 100mph)
3) Burned out headlight
4) Burned out tail light

I love driving with contraptions in my car, so there's a good possibility that he's pulling me over for using a cellphone, which may in fact just be my GPS system or itouch...but it usually is the cell. When it comes time to pull out my registration, I always wind up handing the cop a 6-inch stack of paper. I never throw paperwork away, and cops make me nervous so my hands shake too much when I leaf through the papers individually so I wind up just giving the whole pile to him. It's at this point that we both realize that I have lost my registration somewhere in the heap, and I must call my dad to have him track down the information that is needed. Back to hand shaking. My hands always shake around cops. You'd think I was growing a marijuana metropolis in the trunk that I was attempting to hide. Cops always pick up on this. He wants to know what I was doing that night. What he really wants to ask, is had I been drinking, because he can't seem to figure out why I'm so nervous...and neither can I.

Back to my car. Taking it in for an oil change is always fun. I start off by apologizing to the technician. Not because I'm always almost 3,000 OVER the recommended limit, but because the person has to sit in my car to move it into the garage. Oil changers always think that I don't know jack about car maintenance...which holds true, but they don't have to know that. They create an entire list of things my car needs and they always look extremely concerned, hoping i'll buy something else from them. They must go to acting class as part of their training, because those looks they give me are always frickin believable. I used to fight with them and tell them I have a mechanic who will take care of everything, just so that they would stop hassling me. I got sick of fighting with them, so now I just say this: "You can do anything you want to my car. But I have $30 in my account..." (which is almost always true).

Oh, Ford Escort. I don't completely loathe you. You have given me thick skin. You get me where I need to go. And I didn't have to pay a cent for you.