I just got my car back from the car hospital. It had to go there because I may have driven it over a giant median. After I had the first two wheels were over and it was making that death, scratchy sound, I decided that I might as well just destroy the rest of it. No turning back!
The worst part was explaining this accident to Geico.
Geico: Were you injured in this accident?
Me: No…(just my pride)
Geico: Did the airbags deploy?
Me: (Considering I pulled forward from a complete stop) No…
Geico: Can you explain this accident to me?
Me: (I was vacuuming my car out when suddenly these thugged out drug dealers came towards me shouting and waving weapons. They let loose their giant German Shepherds and I had no choice but to jump in my car and drive away as fast as I could and that is when I hit the median.) I was vacuuming my car and then I just pulled over the median because I wasn’t paying attention.
So for the last few weeks I have been driving a rented Hyundai Accent. It is a death box on wheels. Getting in the car, I felt like if I stopped too fast I would instantly die. Besides being a mobile coffin, my rental car actually smelled like someone died in it. One whiff brought up many scents: dead person, weed, peach scented air freshener, Camel cigarettes. I thought I was imagining all these things until I opened a lower compartment and little bits of weed had been left by the previous driver. So I had to check the trunk, just to make sure that there was not actually a dead body in the car. I drove with the windows rolled down, but this did not help the smell. Whatever happened in this car, deserves a blog of it’s own.
So I got my car back and I just wanted to hug it. It won’t win any beauty contests, but it does have power windows, and doesn’t reak of white diamonds and rotting flesh. If it were in a beauty pageant, it would win that nicest contestant award because it really tries. It’s been there for me during the roughest times.
1. The Blowout from Hell
I was driving down 183 to go see my friend Ashley in Dallas. This is a busy road. I rounding the corner towards the mockingbird exit and then BAM! My tired did not just blow out. It peeled apart from tire rot, which I did not know was a real thing. Luckily, I was in the right hand lane and my car cooperated by stopping before the giant mental thing on the side of the road killed me. Thank you car.
2. The Wheel Came Off
So I packed up my cat and headed off to Austin to see my family. The car was making a strange sound, but I was determined to get there. It’s an older car, and they make noises right? Well, really they make noises as distress calls that something is about to go very wrong. On 35W outside of Alvarado, my wheel starts to slide off the car and I veer into a ditch. It’s getting dark outside and I’m in the middle of nowhere. So I call my parents and Geico. While parked an 18 wheeler loses part of a tire that hits the side of the car and pushes my car further into the grassy area. Surpringly, Kitty is watching me but not alarmed yet, so I’m trying to be comforting. After about an hour, Kitty looks at me with a face that says, “It’s not ok, is it?” So the tow truck driver gets there.
COOLEST GUY EVER. He agrees to tow my car to his shop, then take it to Grapevine Nissan in the morning. So I stuff kitty in the carrier, grab my stuff and hop in the tow truck. He’s about 50 (maybe younger because he smoked a pack of cigarettes while we were driving) and he starts chatting me up. He asked me if I liked those chick flicks like Hairspray and I said, yes I loved musicals. He said his wife did too, but the only chick flick that made him cry was The Color Purple. He then told me that his wife has a pair of jeans in every color. Then he listed all the colors. Kitty did not make a sound.
So we get to the wrecker yard, and he warns me not to get out until Molly is secured. Molly is the snarling guard dog. So I’m sitting in the car with my silent terrified cat in my lap, and he comes back and points to a car in front of me and says “That car has fingers in it. Someone dropped their phone while they were driving and then bam! We haven’t been able to clean the fingers out.” At this point Molly barks and the carrier goes from being balanced to having cat completely one side. He unloads my car and says “Come on, let’s wait for your parents at Dennys”
So truck driver, Merry and Kitty head into this Dennys and sit down to have coffee. He starts explaining to me how dangerous electric cars are because they always emit an electrical charge so it is hard to get bodies out of them during a crash. Then using sugar packets, he showed me how the batteries in electric cars cannot be recycled if they crash and leak and this creates a worse environmental problem than regular cars. I don’t know if he was right, but damn he was entertaining.
This is what my car looks like. It is missing paint on the hood and has a little dent.
Which brings me to number three: I’ll Buff that out guy
I was stopped at Chevron and this guy comes over to me and looks at my paint problem and says “10 dollars, I buff that out.” I have no idea what that means. So he says it again “Ya girl, I buff that out. I buff that out so good.” I tell him no thank you, he persists, and finally gives up and heads into the Chevron for smokes. Then another guy comes up to me and says “I buff that out for you, $10″ I’m like what? Seriously? I told him that the other guy said he’d do it for $5 and he said “Okay, $5. You drive it over to my house and I buff that out.” Because I’m just not that dumb, I tell him I’m good. I’m about to get back in my car when buff that out guy #1 comes back and says “Come on girl last chance, $10.” I told him the other guy would do it for $5. He gets so angry and says “Who told you that? I’ll kill that motherfucker.” Then he gangster walked off to take care of business.
And finally.
4. Rude shouting man
I have a faculty sticker because I’m a GRA for the History department at UT Arlington. Not for long tho (curse you administration for wanting us to park in the remote stadium lot where we will all get raped and murdered!) because they are taking those away from grad students in the fall. Well I’m pulling up to the gate where I swipe my ID for faculty access and this young man wanted to cross the street. Using all of my polite southern manners, I let him cross before driving any farther. Then he shouts at me “BITCH! I HOPE YOUR PUSSY LOOKS BETTER THAN YOUR CAR!”
Here I had a few choices.
A) Run him over
B) Take off my pants, throw my undies at him, hop on the hood of my car spread eagle and yell oh it does. Check it.
C) Stare at him in disbelief
Unfortunately, I did C. And I was not surprised he said mean things to my car, but I was curious why the type of car I drove represented my vagina, why he was so angry at ugly cars and ugly vaginas, and why he hates people who let him have the right away across the street. I like to think that that morning he had asked out his secret crush and when she saw his car, she said “I hope your dick looks better than your piece of shit car.” After all, DFW is a materialistic place.
I could get the car painted, but it drives and parks in so many high crime areas that I liked to think of my peeling paint as theft protection. Another resident of my apartment complex also has a thugged out ride, and nobody ever messes with that
. He doesn’t have peeling paint, but he is always working on it. Mostly likely though, nobody messes with it because he does all of his “business” from the vehicle, and wears shiny gold lame boxers that match his rims. He calls me sparkle shoes. I’m pretty sure I want to stay on his good side.
So thank you car for taking car of me. I won’t paint you until we get the hell out of DFW.