What I Know About Cars
If by any chance you clicked on this link hoping to learn more about cars, I would suggest instead that you spend the next ten minutes reading the factory inspection information from the underside of the nearest pencil sharpener. Not only will your time be better spent, but you will learn infinitely more about cars.
If my automotive know-how was binary data, with each character weighing one byte, the resulting 1.2kb of information would not be enough to justify the use of an entire floppy disk. (This is significant when one factors in the utter worthlessness of floppy disks.) The fact that I walk up to my car each morning, confidently choose a door and climb inside is a triumph of the human spirit.
In fact, by alluding in my last sentence to the existence of car doors, I have divulged close to half of what I do know about automobiles. Having spent this so early in the essay, I’m left staring at a mostly blank page, like a mystery novelist who has divulged the killer in the first chapter.
Since I’ve already blown the suspense, I suppose it’s OK to reveal the rest of what I know about cars: namely that they cost very very much money to maintain. “Maintain” seems like the wrong word for what I find myself doing to my cars. “Resuscitate” seems more appropriate. Perhaps this is a failing of mine, but my car is certainly not in the condition it was in when I acquired it. As I understand, it should have fallen apart months ago and has only avoided complete collapse due to the gallons of synthetic fluids I pour into it each week and the subsequent flushing of those liquids. (Good luck explaining that one to me.)
It is here that my automotive ignorance becomes a full-blown disability, rendering me helpless against the motor-speak of the service mechanic. I remind myself that when he asks me do I want my “rotors shaved,” heactually wants to know whether I want my rotors shaved. He is not questioning my manhood or suggesting I should run crying to my mommy. I should really be honored that he has judged me as someone who would have the slightest idea how to answer that question. Yeah, honored.
I recently became aware that there is a variery of “standard” automobiles which operate on a complex gear-shifting dealy and clutching device. I rode my bike to work for three weeks when I heard that. Was driving too easy? Why make it more difficult? That’s like employing medical science to make sunburns more painful.
Oh – a coworker who was reading over my shoulder has just informed me that standard transmissions (that’s the word he used!) were around beforeautomatic ones. Whew. At least things are progressing in the right direction. It gives someone like me hope for the future. I’m waiting patiently for a car that feeds itself and performs its own enemas.