How to Fix My Car

My car, she is quite old. Well, not really that old, she only came in to existence during the first Clinton administration. In contrast, my existence began during Carter’s. So, you know, she’s a spring chicken by some standards, although certainly not in car years. You see, car years are measured by determining what percentage of the sale price you spend on yearly maintenance, and multiplying that by 100. So, if you buy a car for $20K, and you spend $400 that year on an oil change and some minor body work due to that tree that just popped up out of no where in front of your neighbor’s yard, your car is still only 0.5 years old by it’s 1st human birthday. I bought my car for $500 in October. By my calculations, she’s as old as some of them redwoods out yonder in California.

LooLoo and I are buds, though, and I like to treat her well, assuming this is the best way to ensure that she does the same for me. And this usually works. She’s very considerate, making sure to alert me to the fact that the gas gauge was not working by cutting the engine just before we’d have crossed the train tracks rather than while we were right on top of them. She’s almost too reliable. She doesn’t leak oil like the old Plymouth did, and she doesn’t guzzle it the way she does gas (she’s loyal to her beverage of choice, my LooLoo is). I felt awfully guilty when her oil light came on while I was driving back from New Jersey. My poor LooLoo! She’d held her tongue for so long! She never made a fuss – and because of that, I had completely forgotten about this basic part of her maintenance!

Well, I pulled over into a rest stop right quick, let me tell you. And I looked in the manual, and it confirmed for me what I’d also learned about my last car, which is that LeSabres like 5W-30 motor oil. Well, what my baby wants, my baby gets! And so I marched my little butt into that rest stop and I bought her some 5W-30. I grabbed some paper towels on the way back out, slid into the driver’s seat, released the primary latch, and – nothing happened. I tried again. Nothing. There was a faint clicking noise, but that was all. LooLoo would not respond.

She was clearly giving me the silent treatment. It was ok, I understood. She was feeling that she’d been taken for granted. I hadn’t been following up on her maintenance, her behavior up until then had been that good, but you just can’t do that to cars. You might as well ride them hard and put them away wet for all the damage that you’ll do. And I’m not even talking about damage to their sensitive car psyches! I empathized, I really did. We weren’t in one of those fancy rest stops with garages, unfortunately, so I decided to wait until we’d gotten home and deal with LooLoo’s problems in private, the way I really ought to have done in the first place. I mean, it’s just the considerate thing to do.

LooLoo didn’t complain at all the rest of the way home, so I knew we were on the same wavelength. Unfortunately, once we got home, I broke the trust. I didn’t try to look under LooLoo’s hood for a week and a half. A week and a half! Wow. No wonder she was pissed. I finally, finally, parked her in front of the house yesterday after work and, armed with a very long flat-head screwdriver, attempted to see what could be done about her bonnet problem. The primary latch release was engaging something, that much I could tell. I could actually get my hand under her grill to attempt to disengage the secondary release, but she wasn’t letting me bring that hood up for all the attention in the world. I poked, and I prodded, and she just went quiet. Poor LooLoo. Poor, neglected LooLoo. I was clearly going to have to resort to drastic measures.

I was going to have to take her to a mechanic.

I had our day at the mechanic’s all planned out. I would bring LooLoo in at lunch, and then give her some privacy, maybe walk around downtown while they fiddled with her cables trying to fix that nasty latch problem of hers. Once they got her back to the baseline, I’d fill her oil reservoir with the premium stuff I’d been saving for a special occasion, and maybe even treat her to a tank of Super Unleaded gas for being such a good girl. Of course, once I got to work this morning, I realized that it might really just be that primary release lever. Maybe if I took a pair of pliers and pulled the cable, the hood would pop open. Maybe her cable was just loose. LooLoo’s been through a lot in her life, I can’t fault her for that. Maybe she just needed a bit of a lift to bring her back to looking the way she had in her glory days. It was worth a shot. What’s a little cosmetic procedure between friends as close as we are?

Sadly, no one in the office had pliers.

So, it was with no little trepidation that I brought LooLoo in to the mechanic. I had, of course, made sure to dress the part of Someone Who Knows What They’re Talking About, as my dress and these pointy shoes plainly showed. I’m sure that the updraft from the fan next to the garage – the one that kept blowing my skirt straight up so that I had to gather it in bunches and hold it tight to my thighs – did nothing to take away from my air of Not Being One To Be Trifled With. I explained the situation to the kindly mechanic, making sure to keep one hand on LooLoo’s hood as I spoke so that she’d know she had my support. He asked me to open the driver’s side door and pull the latch release lever a couple of times. Nothing happened. He asked me to do it again, faster this time. Again, nothing. Had LooLoo gone numb under the hood? Oh, my poor darling! He asked me to pull the lever, and hold it. I pulled with all my might, and he started pounding on the hood of the car. Pounding and pounding, and all of a sudden, LooLoo popped her hood! Huzzah! He told me that this was perfectly normal amongst the more mature models, and that I shouldn’t be afraid to use a little force if future situations called for it. He also pointed out that, regardless of what the manual said, LooLoo's oil cap clearly indicated that she would prefer 10W-30 oil. Oh, fickle LooLoo. But she has reserved the right to change her mind, and I respect her for that. As for the release, really, she just needed her latch lubed up with a little WD-40 and her hood given a good pounding.

Turns out, LooLoo is a masochist.