Driven

Yes, reader, I drive. I live in a world that gives me little options. I am not particularly fond of driving and resisted it until my child needed me to drive. I also drive a hybrid; it is my first truly new car, and I am fond of the car. However, unlike my child, I realize I cannot take care of my car on my own; I need help from what has turned to be the most unreliable cross section of my species: car mechanics. I have come to believe that when forced to deal with a car mechanic, one must operate from the position that one is going to be cheated, and one must concentrate only on damage control.

A couple of days ago, what began as a normal chore day turned into a nightmare, thanks to the mechanics I have patronized for the past few years. Actually, it is a dealership, since I am told that no one but a dealer knows how to handle a hybrid, and now, I wonder at the mythologizing of the dealers.

This dealership has middle managers who receive the car and behave as liaisons between the owner and mechanics. The one I saw on my last visit, R.V., is the one I am always "placed" with, although he makes me vaguely nervous. He fancies himself a smooth talker, his smile just a bit too wide, and his eyes always calculating and shifty. He is always eating something or has just finished eating it. He likes to talk about the Indian restaurants he takes his expanding family to, every week, thinking to strike a kinship with me, which contributes greatly to my nervousness, since I do not frequent Indian restaurants every week and I can feel no kinship with a man who is so obvious in his efforts to put me, woman customer, at my ease by keeping conversations within women's domain, like food.

On Friday, however, I made a mistake. R.V. had claimed something wrong with my brakes that would take a lot of money to fix and asked me if I had the deductible for my extended warranty if it gets fixed.

I nodded and agreed.

Yes. I realize I should have somehow channeled a distressed female from my acting repertoire and stared at him in dismay over wide, tear-filled eyes at the prospect of the deductible.

However, I agreed without much fuss and I regretted my agreement immediately, as I saw the cogs and wheels behind R. V.'s eyes suddenly come alive. I knew I'd pay for it.

Well, the service is not covered by the warranty and I told R. V. to just do the regular maintenance, which should cost me about $36. He said he'd have the car ready to go within the hour, perhaps a couple of minutes over. It was my chore day and I shrugged my agreement.

After over two hours, when I finally caught his eye, he called me to his desk. The mechanic, C or G, I never did catch his name properly, awaited me there with his singular giggle. In fact C or G's speech is hitched with this giggle. R. V. and C or G claimed that the car's 12 volt battery had died.

You could have knocked me over with a sneeze.

I had just replaced it last year. What had they done to have murdered the battery so soon? Car batteries do not die every year, especially not the ones that cost about $300! I had been told that I was set with my battery for a few years when I'd changed the battery last year. I'd had no trouble with the car battery at all, until the car was taken into the shop on Friday where C or G did horrible things to it and killed the battery.

I had no choices, of course. So I used up all I had saved the last couple of months, more than twice what the deductible would have been. Within less than 10minutes, the car was ready to go. This was suspicious behavior, indeed, since it would take at least 20 minutes to change the battery, n'est ce pas? Trying to smooth over my feathers, R. V. walked me over to the payment department, complimenting me on taking such good care of my car.

I was quite upset and to compound my foolish behavior, I flounced off the dealership, vowing never to return.

I belied myself as I was back before five minutes had gone by.

Before I reached the first traffic light, all the lights on my dashboard came on alarmingly. I reached the dealership and was scolded soundly by C or G that there were way too many things wrong with my car.

Another sneeze would have done me in.

This was the first I'd heard of many things going wrong with my car. After all, had I not brought it in regularly, spent thousands at this very same dealership to ensure that nothing much would go wrong with my car? Had not R. V. himself complimented me on just the very thing? Leaving me on the curb, C or G drove the car off again behind forbidden doors.

R. V. finished eating something and threw the wrapper as he sauntered over behind closed doors, no doubt to confer about the problem my car was, with C or G. When he returned from the shop, I got another scolding, disguised as an explanation about how my car was a computer and as such, very complicated.

"But I understand how computers work!" I protested to no avail, of course. This was R. V.'s territory and if I had no tips to offer about which Indian restaurant was the best, I should mostly hold my peace and agree with his greater wisdom.

The lights on the dashboard are silent now. But as I left the dealership, dire warnings about how short lived the car was, rang in my ears. R. V. and C or G offer me no warranties or guarantees on the work done. Horrible things could happen at any time, horrible things that could cost me everything and then, whom would I depend on? I'd have to return to R. V. and C or G because, really, in the wide, wild world, no one understood my car but they!

On Friday, I knew I was being cheated. I have analyzed, re-examined, and re-lived this experience over the weekend, an exercise that has rendered me unable to do much else. I can see only one pivot on which the encounter spun: my acknowledgement that I could meet the deductible for a hypothetical repair.

This has been an expensive lesson.

I should have paid more attention in physics class.
I should have learned to play the distressed female par excellence, a mask that would rival Nirupa Roy's Mother roles.
I should have stopped enjoying chess and just concentrated on mastering the strategy of war manipulation.

Perhaps then, I would not be sleepless, at 5 a.m., wondering from where I can conjure a reliable mechanic for my hybrid, or if I would be forced to go crawling back to R. V. and C or G, and how much dignity there was in eating that crow.











 

Pinned Here

My patient reader knows of my room mates, the cats, who have, of long, provided an anchor, a steadying presence, even a definition of what constitutes the idea of home for me. I have considered myself extremely fortunate in having the felines around me. Our relationship, I would insist, goes beyond normal language, our lexicon is structured around analyzing moods rather than actual combination of syllables or sounds. We do communicate, sometimes more effectively than the way I communicate with my students, even.

With my room mates, I do not worry about how my words may be mis-heard, unheard, unremembered, sometimes even misunderstood, like I have to when I speak to my classes. Of course, in my household, like with every household, we are careful not to tread on toes (and paws), not to hurt feelings, to follow the rules of courtesy required for the wheels of routine to rumble on without too many pot holes and other disasters. These rules of adjustment are the same my child and I had figured out when we used to regularly live together, the unspoken acknowledgements, conceding, bowing and stepping, all part of the same dance.

I have felt that the cats and I, the WE who inhabit this space right now, have danced and stepped together enough to merit being considered a household. A lot of my friends point out that this "relationship" is one sided: I seem to depend more on the cats than they on me. The cats are quite capable of feeding themselves (and even me, if only I would agree to adjust my diet to include mice, roaches, snakes, and lizards). They do not much care if it is a bush that keeps them warm and dry from rain or if they are curled up on cat beds around my house. They seem to be quite capable of protecting themselves, even to the extent of keeping their own pet possum in my little backyard.

All this is true. In fact, I have often wondered if the cats notice if I am in the house (unless I am feeding them). It seems that they ignore me, mostly, and unlike dogs, they do not particularly respond to my need for hugs. A few of them do tolerate being held for a breath, and then leave on their terribly important errands and routines, without which, they seem sure, the sun would not rise or set.
I am sure that mine is just one of the many houses they reside in at different parts of their routines. It is not home for them the way it is for me, the way they are for me.

However, then there are days given to the rains, when the horizon well-nigh disappears, when even a breath seems wet; a day very much like yesterday, when I could not hear the television for all the booming and thundering and crashing waterfalls everywhere. All the cats found their way into the big room where I spend most of my waking hours. They chose spots on the floor, in a box, on cat beds, in sofa corners, even a couple of spots on cat furniture. By the time evening fell, I realized that I had fed them all faster than ever, since they were all in the same place and I didn't have to wait for stragglers to stop by. I was glad of that.

As the evening progressed, I also realized that I was, for lack of a better epithet, pinned to my preferred place in the big room. Like points on some compass, the cats had arranged themselves to keep an eye on each other and on me, even as they napped. If I got up to get a book or a drink, all feline heads shot up in alarm, to watch closely what transpired once I had abandoned my assigned space. If I failed to return to my assigned spot in the duration that followed feline reasoning, the youngest kitten would skitter around the house to escort back the truant. The oldest cat watched the kitten and the alpha cat watched the oldest cat. The other kitten remained on alert, in case reinforcements were necessary. The remaining two cats laid their heads down to maintain their napping mien.

The ease with which I fit into this dance argues that I am used to this routine from other rainy days. The way in which we form families, anchors, thin threads that bind us to this plane of existence, are as amazing as they are varied. The idea of mortality looms as my kidney disease advances and as I become more aware of the terrible battles for survival I see being waged around me.

I may not own much in way of wealth or wisdom, but here, in this navel of the world, I have validity. Here, I am pinned in my own place, with designated steps for a familiar dance, with responsibility to participate in a routine.

If unpinned, I would be missed. Here.