Humor

The Quest for Wheels

By Jennifer Redmond

Humor

Dozens of tiny birds dusted their feathers in the dirt and snuggled into the parched earth. On a recent afternoon, I watched this performance from a picture window at a local car dealer. My husband sat beside me in the cozy cubicle of the "finance guy."

Beyond the dirt-covered median with the bobbing birds was another car dealership. Miles of shiny new and freshly waxed used cars glimmered in the hot afternoon sun, a beautiful sight, indeed.

As the gentleman with the tie cheerfully told us that we'd be paying off this car (a modest family vehicle) for the rest of our lucid days on this earth, he handed us two pens and a stack of documents-in triplicate- in Latin. Ok, there was some English but it was unintelligible.

As we signed away, my husband was all business, scrawling his name hastily at the "X" as I exercised my third-grade math brain to figure our monthly income. He finally shot me a gruff "I'll take care of it" and whisked the paper from me.

I hated every minute of this process. Paperwork and I are great enemies. Financial paperwork and I are not even permitted in the same room together.

Fred Finance chatted about his grandson, gave us advice on raising teenagers and was generally a jovial fellow. We continued to fill in the blanks. On and on and on it went. How did humanity evolve from Adam and Eve to this? Running about in fig leaves would make for a more productive afternoon.

Hitting the Road

This journey to a car with less than 150,000 miles began months ago. We surmised that with soon-to-be four licensed drivers, it might be wise to have a reliable vehicle, or at least one with working doors.

My spouse is an eager car hunter. He doesn't relish spending money, so the search for a deal triggers in him a primal instinct. He is going to get a good price on something he at least likes, by golly, so get the heck outta the way! I shudder to remember the experiences we've had with unsuspecting car salespeople.

New Year's Day 1991 was my first exposure to car shopping with my husband. After hours of bargaining, we did not purchase the car and the salesman now has our name in a little notebook marked with a skull and crossbones.

Then there was the time hubby bought a minivan while I was in bed with the flu and a wailing newborn. I never test drove it or cared what he came home with. I did detest that vehicle. It lasted seven long, hard years.

The next time he scouted the car himself, then cleverly located a neighbor with the same vehicle. I simply walked next door and test drove the car in the comfort of my own neighborhood! That worked great. Now the old boy is learning! Or so I thought.

My daughter was the unwilling recipient of the following experiment. Daddy wanted some father-daughter bonding time so he planned a simple trip to the mall. But when Dad was inexplicably drawn to a truck dealer and five hours later came home with a vehicle and a very unhappy little girl who claimed she would NEVER go shopping with him again, some simple ground rules were necessary. These rules are as follows:

1. Promising a child ice cream does NOT mean that you can hijack the field trip and turn it into a car shopping outing.
2. Dining out with the family may not include a "quick drive-through" of every new and used car lot in a 10-mile vicinity.
3. Making a purchase of this sort is a bad idea without consulting one's spouse, especially if the idea has never been discussed.
4. Do not purchase a car that smells like decomposing turkey (another story, another car).

The End of the Line

And so my darling kept most of these rules during this most recent process. Yet as I bemoaned my wasted afternoon, I was seriously thinking that #3 needed to go. I am an impediment to this procedure.

My favorite part of the entire process-which took three months, multiple emails, phone calls, and visits to dealers in two states--is chatting with Marty, the handsome young man who worked so hard to sell us this vehicle. I wanted to help the poor kid. He plans to marry his sweetheart, you know, and this is his first day on the job. He grew up going to our church and attended the same school as my children. Yes, we definitely should purchase the car from this nice boy.

My husband insists that this is a business transaction rather than a social occasion. He has no empathy for the kid or his quota.

Eventually our pen runs out of ink and Fred turns us over to Marty once again. He escorts us out to our new vehicle to demonstrate the features.

And I'm outta here.

I announce to my husband that I have the keys to my trusty minivan and I'll see him at home. He and Marty look at me aghast.

"You're leaving?" asks Marty. "But this is the best part!"

Yeah, well, tell that to the birds with their heads in the dirt.