Car-ma

Car-ma is like karma, only with cars, and less explicable. Mine is bad.

I have owned 4 cars in my 27 years on the planet. The first one was a 1987 Buick LeSabre, steel gray. It was called the Grocery-getter. My grandma gave it to me. I loved that car. And then I totaled it (I hydroplaned into a concrete divider, veered off in the opposite direction, went off the road, and flipped the car. I flipped a 1987 Buick, which is about like saying I flipped a freaking tank. I am talented, is what I mean). I had that car for maybe 8 months. ( I should also mention that when I flipped the car it was full of crap for some reason. My graduation 'regalia' was in there, along with a kitchen-aid mixer, various items from my high school locker, and miscellaneous other crap. This will be important later).

I had to save for awhile to buy my next car, a shit brown Chevy Lumina that had been owned by a person...considerably heavier than me. The entire driver seat tilted about 45 degrees to the left, so I always sat at an angle. I hated this car more than I hated the guy who had just dumped me over the phone because I was "too good for him." (Which, by the way, is a sucky thing to say to a person you are dumping. Its supposed to be a compliment, but its not really, and then you feel bad about hating someone who said something nice to you except they said it because how do you argue with it or change it really, and its really a huge load of horse manure). This car's name was Piece of Shit Car and was always sung like the Adam Sandler song. And the damn car WOULD NOT DIE. I tried leaving it unlocked, always. I would park outside convenience stores and LEAVE THE KEYS IN IT, and no one else wanted it any more than I did. No one was desperate enough to steal this car. It would start to act weird mechanically, but the mechanic could never find anything wrong with it. Aside from the fact that it was leaking oil from everywhere and would be more expensive to fix than the car was worth. Finally, it started dying every time I put on the brakes so I had an excuse to get a different car.

Which I also hated. A 2002 Saturn, and the air conditioner worked for the 1st month I had it, then broke, then was fixed (expensively) then broke again, etc. Arkansas in August is like unto the lower rungs of hell. It is hot and it is humid. I looked like I'd run 12 miles every morning when I got to work. It was miserable. And then one day it was full of crap (stuff to donate, stuff to take to my mom for a yard sale, stuff stuff stuff) and I got rear-ended by a truck and shoved up the ass of a city bus. And it was totaled. And I was secretly extremely happy about this, but also beginning to suspect that anytime I have a bunch of junk in my car I will have a wreck that will total my car.

Now I have replaced it with a car that I am in love with and I've been driving it a little over a year. It is the Old Crusty Gangster car. I never fill it with junk. I keep it extremely clean on the inside. And its in the shop for mysterious engine revving reasons. I put the car in park yesterday and it revved higher than it does even on the interstate. And I just know, that because I love this car, it will be diagnosed with some incurable car cancer and I will be very sad. Also, carless, because my insurance doesn't cover loss of car due to bizarre mechanical problems.

Other examples of bad car-ma: I'm the only 20-something I know who can't get out of a ticket for anything. Was I going 5 miles over the speed limit? Ticket. Did my tags expire yesterday? Ticket. Did I forget to put the new insurance card in the glove box yesterday when it was renewed? Ticket. Did my headlight go out 5 minutes ago? Ticket. What the hell with that? Other people can blow past me at 100 mph, firing illegal firearms out the windows, and snorting blow off a dead hooker and not get pulled over. But I forget to signal a lane change and 30 seconds later a cop appears from nowhere with a ticket already written.

Another superstitious side note: Every time my husband and I plan a nice vacation we get hit with large, unexpected expenses. We just spent $800 fixing his car, $4,000 on re-financing our house, and now I'm sure my car needs a new transmission plus whatever the most expensive parts are in the car.

The moral I'm taking from this is that the universe does not want me to drive a car that I like or am unashamed of and if my husband and I want to have a fun vacation we should expect the roof to cave in and the foundation to crack about a month before we leave. Clearly, I am meant to take some sort of vow of poverty.

EDIT: $838.00 BEFORE TAX. THE CAPS LOCK KEY IS ON BECAUSE HOLY SHIT. PLEASE JUST KILL ME NOW. ALSO, IF YOU THINK ITS OBNOXIOUS THIS IS ALL IN CAPS BE GLAD YOU DON'T KNOW ME IN PERSON OR YOU WOULD BE HEARING THE OUT LOUD VERSION OF THIS.