Car Repairs: The Story Continues ...

There is something uniquely affecting about having repair work done on your car. On the one hand, you're glad that you're not likely to see your tire go rolling down the interstate, separate from your car; that your steering won't suddenly be, well, steering; and that your car won't suddenly die in the middle of Wyoming or Nebraska or Colorado because the alternator decided to give up the ghost. Not fearing these things is a good thing.

On the other (much more broke) hand, you feel weak-kneed, lightheaded and a little bit nauseated when you walk out the door, your car keys back in your hand, and the financial equivalent of some key body part signed over, interest-free, for the next few months.

You tremble a little, you might even shed a few tears (it's alright; most of us do). You give your car a lecture, telling it that if it makes any &%*$^#! noises in the next (fill in the blank) months, you're going to pull over and shoot it. End of story.

You pull your seat back up to its original knee-munching distance from the pedals, you take a deep breath, drive away ... and you hear a noise that's worse than the one that forced you to take it in in the first place.

You haven't had time to buy a gun, so you can't make good on the promise to shoot your car, so you call George the Mechanic instead, who says "Oh, yeah ... I know what that is. Bring it on back in." George fixes it, the new noise is gone, and you declare, in your mind, that George is a genius.

But you live with heart-in-your-throat fear of the old noise coming back, like maybe the thing that was fixed wasn't really the problem in the first place. You fear that.

And then you start to browse the Internet, pricing bicycles and searching for year-round warm climes in which to live so you can ride your new bicycle without having to buy studded tires to ride in in the snow and ice. While browsing new, warmer towns, you begin to (re)contemplate graduate school, and all the things you could study while living in this new (warm) town, gaily riding your bicycle all over the place, a backpack full of new, expensive, heavy books accompanying you. With this new degree, you plan to work for the State Department, to move to Europe, where everyone rides bicycles. You'll fit right in, and you'll get to go to amazing coffee shops where you can't understand the insults people are saying about you, the Crazy American, because you're a crazy American, and Americans don't speak anything but English. The Europeans are safe to insult you 'til they're blue in the face, and you'll be obliviously happy with a cup of coffee in your hand, your bicycle not too far away, an interesting job working for your government and your constantly-broken car far, far away, back in America.

But then you hear the gentle whirrrrr of your office printer and realize that you're not in Europe, you don't own an ultra-cool bicycle, you don't work for the government and, perhaps worst of all, you're not drinking coffee. You're still surfing the 'Net in your office, with your ever-broken car just across the street. You start to consider part-time jobs to pay for this month's repairs, and you wonder whether man (or woman) can live on cheap cans of black beans or tuna.

Days like this make me want to gorge on chocolate.