Since last week my car has had the "check engine" light on when I drive. I brought it to the shop last Friday, and it spent a spa weekend in the shop, but as soon as I picked it up Monday afternoon the light came on again. I guess it wanted to remain on vacation longer. Today I drove it to the shop, and the light didn't come on for the first time since Monday. This light is driving me crazy. I keep thinking it's a message about checking my own engine. Is someone trying to tell me something? If I want to feel totally inadequate, I have a conversation with a mechanic. Then I have my husband call, and it all gets cleared up, except I can't understand my husband either. I'm inclined to the kicking the bumper and cursing mode of response. I've talked to the car softly, reasoned with it, threatened to junk it, and said sadly I was disappointed in it's behavior. I love, my car, but not it's behavior. And time outs have not helped.
I did have a nice conversation with the kid who drove me back to the house after I'd dropped off the car. Somehow we got on the subject of Kakatoa, and I was delighted he'd never heard of that event, in the 1880's, and I proceeded to relate the explosion, the darkening of the sky around the world for three years, and other juicy details. I was just getting to the storm off Galveston in the early twentieth century when we arrived at my house. By then I knew he's been traveling with a band for two years, and they played Galveston, and that people there are blaise about boarding up their houses during hurricane warnings, and that he too believed in global warming. Then we parted, never to meet again. Well, the way the car is acting, we might.
A little encounter, but fun, between the old and the young. If you pick the right stories to tell, you can hook even a grunge/rocker and hopefully send him to the library. Once an English teacher, always an addict. Read, young world, read. Me, I'm going to read consumer reports on my car and see what I can get to trade it in.
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