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Passport to Terror
I'm afraid of our car.
Really, I'm terrified of it. It's never given me a reason, it's just a feeling I have. Very probably an irrational feeling on my part, but it still vexes my every waking moment.
Our car, a 1997 Honda Passport, has served us faithfully and unfalteringly for over five years. That's right… no breakdowns, no repair bills, nothing except for gas, oil changes, insurance, one battery, and 72 obscene car payments. I changed the front brake pads (with considerable assistance) a few weeks ago at 82K miles and they still had a good ten thousand miles on them. See what I mean by unfaltering? Most people wear out brake shoes before they make three payments. (Of course, most people drive by knee jerk reactions such as "green light means tromp the pedal to the floor" and red light means "jab the brakes at the last possible moment and come to a screaming, smoky stop".) The tires aren't even wearing. Usually, 60k miles is enough to reduce most tires to the thickness of your standard onion skin, but my tires still have perfectly visible treads with four times the required tread depth with 82k miles.
So why am I complaining? I'm complaining because it hasn't had any trouble, because with my luck, it's saving up for something big. Something like vomiting the entire engine out the tailpipe while attempting to leave the Burger King parking lot, or just simply imploding on the way to work one morning. Not only am I a lousy mechanic, I'm also a broke lousy mechanic, so my family would be rendered vehicle-less in the event of a major repair job. My wife would have to buy groceries using my son's Radio Flyer wagon, and I would probably have to don roller skates and cling to the back of a city garbage truck for my daily commute to work, risking city garbage getting caught in my teeth and hair.
Not that the Passport has been the perfect car. It's had plenty of non-critical breakdowns. For instance… it goes through headlights faster than a jack rabbit on a date. I always put off changing them because I have to fit my hand in an impossibly small space, then twist it around at a 43 degree angle while simultaneously pushing upwards to the left with a backwards jiggling motion while keeping my tongue perfectly set in my right cheek. And that's just to get the old ones out… putting the news ones in is the exact same procedure in reverse only with more profanity. So naturally I tend to drive around quite often with one headlight burning. The local police now only stop me to inform me when I do not have a headlight burned out.
Also, all but one of the power windows went kaput very shortly after the manufacturer's warranty expired. They way it happened was this: At three separate times, each one of them during a torrential downpour, one of the children would decide that this would be a great time to roll down a window. I would shout "Dammit Isaac/Virginia put your window back up this instant!" When they would try to do it, the window would make a fatal-sounding crunching/grinding noise, then fall all the way down in the door and refuse to come back up, drenching both children. I considered this to be poetic justice, because when we arrived back home, I would be the one out there in the rain on our dirt driveway, trying to fix the window. I was of course unable to fix the windows, so my only option was to manually pull the window up, jam something under it to hold it in place, then put the door panel back on. Any random object would do… I now have half of a wiffle bat holding one window up, an exceptionally large rawhide bone under the other one, and a broken broom handle under another. Call me an innovator.
Still, I gladly accept these little problems in place of major engine or transmission-related problems. The car is after all made by Honda, and Honda generally makes their cars indestructible to the point where you can actually drive around with no oil in the crankcase for two years or while missing major engine parts entirely.
Mechanic: So, Mr. Wingate, do you have any idea when this piston fell out?
Me: I can't remember.. seems like it was still in the trunk when I put the Christmas tree in there last year.
Mechanic: I imagine all the oil came out about the same time didn't it?
Me: You mean there's supposed to be oil in there?
I have vowed to myself never to open the hood of our Passport. I'll just take it to a mechanic when it starts making odd noises or expelling faulty engine parts through the hood. I don't want to open it for fear the car will sense me doing it and threaten to break something before my very eyes. Hey buddy, good to see ya again!!! Lookie here at these pistons and valves and stuff! They break easy. Wanna see? I'd have to slam the hood and press my hands to my ears to block out the muffled, yet maniacal laughter coming from the engine compartment.
Call me silly and/or irrational, but I'm still afraid of our car. I wouldn't be surprised if it were outside the window, looking in at me with it's one good headlight as I write this article and chuckling to itself. Perhaps it will leave a message on the side of the house like "ring job" or "transmission" scrawled in it's own motor oil.
Provided that there's any oil in it, of course.