Despondency

It has been three days since I saw her, and more than four days since she touched me. The misery of our separation--her abandonment--penetrates to my crankshaft.

On weekdays she drives into the parking garage where she is keeping me, and parks her new car--an arrogant snub-muzzled silver Mazda 3--beside me without, it seems, a care in the world. Surely she doesn't intend to leave me here.

Did I go too far? I should have stopped at the timing belt. I should not have let this slow leak grow so out of proportion.

Night falls again, and I am more depressed than I thought possible, even for a German people's car in Uni Black.

Would things have been different if I had come in Porcelain Blue, Classic Green, Cool White, Silver Arrow, or Tornado Red?

I don't really think so. I am what I am. I will not apologize.

Some Bitterness, I Suppose

I am sitting in a downtown garage nursing a flat tire. I guess I am just not ready to move on from the painful events of recent weeks.

Today my owner was on her hands and knees to me, first trying to reinflate me with the little electric pump that feeds off my cigarette lighter, then actually trying to change the tire. To her credit, she almost succeeded. But she is too small and weak. She has to come back tomorrow with some WD-40 and a male.

She has promised me all-new tires and alloy wheels if I will cooperate and move on.

Am I enjoying this? No. We have been together too long for her pain to cause me real pleasure.

Still. Schadenfruede is a German word, after all.

A New Life Begins

I was born in Mexico in 1996, many years after my conception in Germany.

Apparently I was a robust young car, despite some congenital defects.

My first vivid memory is of being checked out thoroughly by a slightly high-strung American woman in June 2002, prior to her purchase from my first owners, a very nice Chinese-American couple who bought me new.

My second owner drove me, loved me, and sometimes treated me harshly from the time I was 46,000 miles until I was 94,000 miles. She and I nearly parted ways a few weeks ago, in a dramatic contretemps in the crowded left lane of Interstate 495 between Bowie, Maryland and Annandale Virginia.

My timing belt--which she knew needed to be replaced--finally snapped.

I am not bitter. I am just saying.

I could not be resuscitated at the scene of the accident, and was towed by hydrolift to Wheaton Service Center, where I remained on life support at the back of the lot for several weeks while my owner tried to sell me "As Is."

If I ever write an account of this terrible chapter in our lives together, I will call it As Is. Again, I am not bitter. I am just speaking from deep within the headlights here.

Oh. Wait. As Is is taken.

Sometimes Fate intervenes to show us a different way. Two sales deals fell apart in rapid succession through a bizarre series of mishaps. Finally, my owner repaired my timing belt.

Finding me miraculously recovered, my engine humming like a top, she made a bold decision: to keep me, to resurrect and care for me as a would-be collector car, to garage me until the inevitable day when her own daughter would need a really cool little car.

So ended my first life as a utilitarian vehicle. Now I will have a new life.

This is my story.