The Red Car

I drive the red car. Note that I do not call it my car. It is not mine. I would not have bought that car. It does not fit me personally at all, but I could live with that if it didn't have such a vast quantity of problems. I once gave Stephanie/Alex/Alephanie/Stephalex (take your pick) a ride home, and he made the following accurate observation: "It sounds like your car is falling apart as you drive it."

It is red. Red is, by far, my least favorite color. And the red car is, well, redder than the reddest red times infinity. All of my readers have seen the red exterior. Some of them have looked into the car and observed that every bit of the interior is also red, with a few bits of chrome and black.

The air conditioning does not work. Most of the time I can deal with this. My windows are pretty much perpetually rolled down. However, there are some days when the atmosphere is so vilely hot and humid that having the windows rolled down is not enough. Then there are the rainy days. I am more than happy to leave my windows down while I drive in the rain, but my passengers don't always share that sentiment. In addition, when I drive on the highway with my windows down my hair flies in my face and I can't hear my music.

It literally stinks. It's not bad when it's completely dry, but if too much rain gets inside, I'm doomed to endure a strange musty scent faintly reminiscent of stale pop-tarts. This can last for days or weeks, depending on how much water the seats and carpet absorbed. Closing the windows after it's already been raining for quite some time (my dad does this all the time) makes the smell nearly unbearable when the doors are opened again. I have an air freshener, but it's taking its time in doing what it does. My air is much fresher than it was a few days ago, but I still dread driving it after it has spent the day in the sunny school parking lot with the windows rolled up.

The stereo and radio are completely out of whack. The front passenger speakers don't work. Normally. On occasion they will roar to life when least expected. This isn't really a big issue for most songs, but there are some songs that have certain sounds coming from each side, so you don't get the full expreience unless all the speakers are working. Sometimes the radio flat out dies, only to rise once more anywhere between a few seconds and a few days later. The first time it happened, I had no clue what was going on. I tried turning the volume on the radio all the way up. I tried turning the volume on my ipod all the way up (I listen to my ipod rather than the radio). I tried skipping forward and backward on the playlist. About a minute after it had died, it came back. I had not yet turned down the radio or the ipod, and the song that came on started with a loud yell/scream noise. Jonathon and I jumped (maybe that's an understatement). Every time the song starts we laugh. Ask him about it sometime, and I'm sure you'll get some exciting and elaborate tale.

The seat does not come up very far. It comes up far enough that I have a perfectly safe view of the road, but it's low enough that people can barely see me over the steering wheel and low enough to render the sun blocking apparatus completely useless. Despite the sheer awesomeness of my sunglasses, they aren't dark enough to ward off much of the sun's mighty glare.

The hood will not open. Or at least I can't get it to open anymore. I've watched people open it, and I've opened it myself in the past, but it will no longer open for me. I kind of really need to refill on windshield wiper fluid. I can't completely blame the car for this until I ask someone else to try to open it, but I really do believe, based on how it's behaving, that something is jammed in the simple mechanism that normally allows one to open the hood.

From time to time, the rearview mirror will fall off of the windshield. This is obviously dangerous and unnerving.

The alternator recently gave up on life. Fortunately, it was easily repaired, but I don't know how long that will last. I like being able to start the red car.

It makes strange noises. We call it the cricket car, because the sound it constantly emits sounds somewhat like a herd of crickets (do crickets come in herds?). We've tried replacing all sorts of bands and belts, but nothing keeps the crickets quiet for long. It can get really annoying. When turning left, oftentimes it sounds like a turning podracer. I like this noise, but I have no idea why it happens and that makes me nervous.

The speedometer is off. However, once I figured out that I was really going 3-5 mph slower than it was telling me, I had no issue adjusting.

The gas gauge doesn't work. It normally tells me that my tank is either full or way below empty. I have to watch the odometer instead and reset it every time I fill the tank. This means that I can't fill the tank only partially, for I will have no idea when to refill it if I do so.

Now, the engine is unhappy. When I push the gas pedal, the engine wills to disbelieve that I am pushing it as hard as I am. Sometimes it disbelieves that I am pushing the pedal at all. Then it snaps back into reality and jerks forward. To anyone listening to the engine or monitoring my speed, it would sound and look like I was pumping the gas pedal. It normally only does this for the first several seconds after I stop or apply the brakes. Yesterday, it was so bad that I was surprised to have made it home.

Even though my mom and I know that the poor red car needs to be put out of its misery, my dad is in denial of that fact. He believes that it's not as bad as I say it is, or that it can easily be fixed. To be fair, all of our cars have been nicer to him than to anyone else (someday I might tell tales about my mother and the demented car), so he really isn't getting the full effect. But he also develops attachments to cars and hates to give up on them until they're completely dead. Or until they catch on fire. That happened once, after my mom had insisted that something was amiss with the car. My mom has decided that he will get to drive the red car for a day or two on his hilly ride to work. Then he can judge whether or not the car has issues. I the meantime, I get to drive the old blue truck. The old blue truck is a topic for another time. It is nowhere near as bad as the red car or some of our past vehicles, but it's got a few oddities of its own. I will look exponentially more ridiculous driving it than I do driving the red car. There will be no skimping on wearing the sunglasses as long as I drive the truck. The sight is sure to make people smile at the very least. I love to make people smile.