My Volvo Problem

I have a Volvo.

And I have a Volvo problem.

Want to hear my Volvo problem?

I'm embarrassed by my Volvo.

This little problem of mine is especially annoying because my Volvo replaces my previous car, a PT Cruiser, which was also embarrassing, but for very different reasons.

The PT Cruiser was embarrassing because, well, it was a PT Cruiser. I don't need to say anything more about that, do I?

I didn't realize that the Volvo would embarrass me when I signed all of the contracts and papers and checks necessary to acquire said vehicle but, now that I have owned it for nearly a month, I now understand and am slowly accepting that I am now embarrassed by my own car.

Why?

It's too good for me.

Call this low self-esteem-- maybe that's what it is-- but I do not feel worthy of this particular vehicle. I feel ashamed when I drive it through gritty neighborhoods. When people ask me "Oh, you got a car? What is it?" I immediately start to feel warm and prickly underneath my shirt. I furrow my brow before answering, wet my lips and reply in any of the following ways,

"Oh, it's an old Volvo."

"A used Volvo."

"A 2002 Volvo."

"A small Volvo."

"It's just an old Volvo, an S-40-- you know that's the smallest one they made that year."

"An eight-year-old Volvo."

I hate apologizing for my car, but I do it, and I know that I'm doing it, but I can't stop myself.

Why?

* It has supple leather seats that I wouldn't particularly mind dying in.

* It has heated seats, and I've totally gotten over the I-just-pee-peed-in-my-pants feeling.

* It has faux wood all over the place.

* It has airbags all over the place.

* It has Dynamic Stability Control.

* It's a Volvo.

I'm proud of all of these things, and, yet, I'm also concurrently embarrassed by them. And very much so.

I guess I apologize for the car, or diminish it because I am afraid of being judged. When I told my boss what I got her response was, "Oh! Can you really afford that?" I was immediately ashamed and embarrassed, and I also immediately went online and checked my checking account balance. Still okay. But what she said had a deep impact on me, especially since she is the reason why I make practically nothing.

Could I really afford it?

It was $8,900. I traded in the Cruiser and they mercifully gave me $3,500 for it. $5,400 for a used car isn't really all that much money. Is it? So I bought it outright-- no payments, no nothing. Is what I did okay?

I keep questioning myself. And, everytime I see someone who knows that I work for a small, shitty non-profit and they ask me about what kind of car I drive, I want to fall on the ground and die at their feet rather than pronounce those two dreaded syllables....

Vol

vo.

Oh, God-- just don't make me say it.

I love the car. I really do. I love how precisely it handles, unlike the Cruiser, which was like trying to steer a Hippo on opium across a skating rink, I love the comfortable, supportive, lusciously leathery seats, I love the pick-up of the 1.9 liter turbo, I love the increased fuel economy. I think I love everything about it except for the fact that it's a Volvo. It's just too refined, too beautiful, too uptown.

If I had a homely, fat-chick friend, this is probably exactly how she would feel if we went clubbing together. Poor Gretchen.

IDGAS: And THAT'S My New Philosophy!

Here's an incongruous headline that probably won't make it onto Jay Leno's desk, but should:

"Chrysler Lost $4 Billion But Sees Signs of Improvement"

See? Life truly is all about perspective. After having spent nearly two years behind the wheel of one of their products, my wife's 2001 PT Cruiser, I have a unique bond or kinship with Chrysler. Even though I traded the '01 Cruiser in for an '02 Volvo last month, that kinship still persists to this day, like a stubborn herpe or a sweaty homeless guy with hot feet breath bothering you for change while you're filling up at the gas station.

After reading this headline, my bond with Chrysler has only grown, and it's grown exponentially.

I don't know if you've realized this about me by now, but I'm sort of a glass-half-empty kind of guy. I tend to be a bit of a downer. If somebody has a good idea, I'm the one who's most likely to unbuckle his trousers and dump a steaming, sizzling load of pragmatism all over it. I tend to look at the negative more easily than I look at the positive in any given situation.

But, golly gee willikurs, Ma-- I sure do love me a cockeyed optimist.

And, when I think of Chrysler, $4 billion dollars in the red and still claiming to see "positive signs," well, you know what? That practically makes me want to burst into song.

"The hiiiiiiiiills are ali--"

Sorry.

Chrysler's unique brand of vapid optimism is really awe-inspiring, actually, especially at a time when we are living in a perpetual fog of financial meandering and angst-inducing uncertainty. They're like the grinning guy on the plane that's careening towards the Indian Ocean saying, in the 2 seconds before impact, "I'm not dead yet!"

And, well, you've really got to admire cheeky sonsofbitches who think like that.

In a way, Chrysler is really exemplifying a life strategy that we would all do well to consider adopting, and that is the strategy of I Don't Give a Shit, or IDGAS. IDGAS seems to be an appropriate strategic monkier for a company who continues to produce cars with some of the poorest fuel economy of any car maker out there (my former PT Cruiser is at the top of that rather long list-- or is it the bottom?).

Chrysler's cutting-edge IDGAS philosophy is actually a brilliant marketing and financial strategy, because it combines time-tested methods that have led to proven success:

1.) A bright outlook in spite of obviously bleak facts.

2.) The perpetuation of outdated, outmoded, inefficient, ineffective methodologies and practices.

3.) A dogged persistence in the face of outright failure.

4.) The complete and utter disregard for the current state of the world.

5.) The ardent belief that cheap, substandard plastics are your friend.

So, whenever you're fucking up at work or home, whenever you're accused of not being "with it" or maybe being told that you have your head shoved so far up your own ass that you can lick your own pancreas, just remember, you're not being lazy or stupid or naive or possessing the intellect of a tortured hamster-- you're practicing the IDGAS philosophy. Because, when you're a member of the IDGAS klan, losing $4 billion dollars is just another day at the office.

Cassette Me Free

The damndest thing happened to me this morning.

I got into my car and started it up, and I looked at the dashboard, maybe for the first time ever, really seeing it. And you know what I realized?

My car has a tape-deck.

This is one of the benefits of owning an almost decade-old car. It's weird, but my 2001 Chrysler PT Cruiser kind of straddles the great, vast divide that separates old cars from new cars. Sure, it's got a dent that's covered in rust and it creaks and groans like a Craftmatic Adjustable bed in the early morning, but it's also got side-impact airbags, traction control.

And a tape-deck. And I know that, but it's something that I don't often think about, or ever think about, really, because I don't keep tapes in my car because who does that in 2010 besides annoying, retro-chic people desperately hanging onto their Tretorns and their Umbros and their pathetic, unctuous youth.

And their puff-paint.

I can remember a year or so ago, reconnecting with an old, forgotten friend of mine who's now a big deal musician on the West Coast, and, when I say that he's a big shit musician, I mean that he's got a Pandora station, just so we all know I'm not resorting to hyperbole. When I picked him up at his parent's house, he was dressed in torn plaid pants, old VANS, a ratty-ass pea-coat and a hat that looked like it belonged to a Depression-era railroad conductor. He climbed into my car, stinking to hell of cloves, smoke, and generalized unwashedness, and he was immediately impressed by two things he saw.

"Holy fuck! Your car has a tape-deck! That is SO COOL!"

My eyes glazed over the car's dashboard and I realized that he was indeed correct.

"Oh, yeah, I guess it does." And then he saw my small, blue emergency light that I activate whenever I stop to help some poor bastard who's run his car into something.

"Holy shit! Are you a fucking cop?!"

"Um, no," I said, "I'm an emergency medical technician."

"Oh-- thank God-- 'cause I've got mad bud in my jacket."

And you know what? Even though I hadn't seen him since I was fourteen, if I had been a cop, I would have arrested him-- just for saying the phrase "mad bud" because, really, who the fuck talks like that?

Even that day spent with my old friend, to whom I have not spoken to since, I never gave any thought at all to my tape-deck. Back in 2003, when my wife and I were first dating, I made mixes for her, like all young lovers of my tender generation did. They didn't, however, include songs by "The Counting Crows" or "Matchbox 20." They were tender, sensitive ballads by folk singers like Stan Rogers, Richard Shindell, Patty Griffin, John Gorka, Lucy Kaplansky and Sinead Lohan.

Interspersed with the sprightly, joyful tunes of Sir Arthur Sullivan, of course-- because, let's face it-- I had to let her know exactly what she was getting into here.

But as the years rolled along, and as the mixes I made for her turned to the CD realm, I slowly forgot that the tape-deck even existed. When we moved into our house in February, my wife found a shitload of old audio cassettes in the closet, put them all in a canvas old-lady shopping bag, and packed them away. And, this morning, for some strange reason, I re-realized that my car had a tape-deck, and I remembered that the cassettes were in the bag in the basement, and I wanted them.

All of a sudden, I wanted them.

And this morning, as I was driving to work, listening to scratchy, dull and sweet recordings of songs I hadn't heard in yers, I thought to myself that nostalgia's a funny thing. And I'm not even sure if that's what I was experiencing. Memories didn't come flooding back to me, and I didn't get all sensitive and sentimental or welled up with tears, even though that is my M.O. I was just enjoying the music, and the ride, and the content way the songs made me feel, like I was getting reacquainted with old friends who notice strange objects in my car-- like a blue light or a tape-deck.

And I was even singing along to these long forgotten about songs, harmonizing, as if no time at all had passed. And I thought to myself, shit-- if only it could be that way with old friends.

P.T. Loser

This is a picture of a broken tie-rod that Soly & Jack, the Israeli and Chinese mechanics with whom I trust my car and my life, removed from my 2001 PT Cruiser yesterday morning. Jack realized I needed a new tie-rod when he was in the process of putting two brand-new tires on the car, replacing two old, bald ones. When he put the new tire on the front passenger side and tightened the lugs, he put his hand on the tire and it wobbled around like a wagon wheel from Oregon Trail.

"Oh, shit," Jack said.

"Please don't say that," I said, knowing I was already looking at around a $200 service bill for the oil change and the two tires.

But it was definitely an "Oh, shit," and my total for the day ended up being $395.38.

As Click & Clack would say, "Looks like Soly's going to make this month's boat payment."

Frankly, I have difficulty picturing 61-year-old grizzled and gnarled Soly piloting a boat. At least, not any boat that doesn't have an Israeli flag on its side and an anti-aircraft gun on the stern.

I know, also, that Soly and Jack don't tell me something's wrong when it isn't. When they removed the bum tie-rod, they showed it to me. "You needed a new one of those more than you needed two new fucking tires," said Soly, "if that snapped, and it was close to snapping, you'd be dead."

I was going to ask him to take the tires back then, but they were already on the car.

Going to Soly & Jack's always fills me with a mixture of emotions. On the one hand, I really enjoy being there. I like the way their garage smells, I like the sound the heater makes when it turns itself on, I like Soly & Jack's uniforms-- and not in that annoying hipster way, either-- and, of course, I just like Soly & Jack. I like talking to them about Sarah Palin (Soly: "She would have made a good prostitute.") and I like talking to them about where they came from (Jack: "I came here from China in 1991, January 1st. My sister and I slept for 24 hours our first day here. Heard fireworks. I was so fucking bored for two years.")

What I don't like is giving them lots of money. This tends to happen, though, when I bring around the PT Cruiser. Bushings, ball-joints, broken rims, haywire electrical system, a sunroof that closes sometimes, oxygen sensors, tie-rods, dog-bones (yes, apparently there's a rear component of my car's suspension called a "dog bone." It's got three holes. Jack showed it to me.) All things break. I understand that. When they break, you need to fix them. I just wish things wouldn't break so often and that, when they did, they were cheaper to replace.

For a car built on the cheap, it's not very cheap to fix.

"This thing is a fucking joke!" Soly yelled at me today, in between sips of his coffee, which he drinks from a miraculously pristine white ceramic mug, "It gets, what, 20 miles-a-gallon, barely, it accelerates like a fucking old dog, and it looks like a cow that's bending over!" He energetically gulps some more coffee and then he rages, his forsaken, broken teeth jutting out like icicles, "That's why they only made this piece of shit for one year!"

I stared at him. I was shocked. I thought Soly knew everything about cars.

"Soly, they're still making them today."

"WHAT?!" he bellowed furiously at me, spitting coffee onto my cardigan, "Then how come every goddamn customer I have who drives one of these things drives a 2001?!"

Using my internet-ready smartphone, I Googled "PT Cruiser" and showed him that Chrysler began production in 2000 and it's scheduled to continue until 2010.

"What is that," asked Soly, peering at my phone under his bifocals, "a Blueberry?"

"Yeah," I said, "with cream on top."

"What probably happened was," Soly reasoned, "they sold the PT Cruisers everywhere in 2001, and, when smart people realized they were pieces of shit, they sold the rest of them down South, where the retards live." In spite of his insinuation that I am equivalent to a Kentucky-fried, sister-fucking retard, I laughed.

When Jack tells me that the tie-rods are "always going bad on these cars," I complain that this is what he says whenever I bring the car in for something.

"What doesn't 'always go bad on these cars'?" I asked. Jack smiled at me.

"The seats."

Soly refers to my car as the "P.T. Loser."

I told him that my wife really loves the car and has a great desire to only have one car payment, which I respect and understand. The Cruiser is paid off and is titled under my name. She has a 2009 Honda Fit which she loves more than Jesus loves his Birkenstocks.

"My wife loves this car and she thinks it's indestructable," I told Soly, "her mother has one that has over 200,000 miles on it."

"Well, she's crazy-- she's probably had every fucking thing rebuilt on it besides the radio antenna! It's not even the same car it was in 2001 anymore."

I told him that I wanted to sell it and get a 1968 Beetle. He laughed.

"See? You're fucking crazy, too! You are perfect for each other."

We both cracked up at that. In the midst of our laughter, Jack came up and informed me that the motor mounts were starting to go. He motioned for me to come over so I could see for myself.

"No," I said. "I believe you."