Object Lesson

Yesterday, when I got in my car to leave my parents' house and come home to my apartment at 6:30 in the morning, my car would not start. Or rather, I think I did get it to start, but it was shaking so horribly that I can't be sure if it ever did actually turn over. This was A Bad Thing, as I had a meeting at work with someone on my list at 10:30 that I did not want to reschedule. I called Mom's cell phone and left her a message asking for suggestions, and went and played computer solitaire for an hour until Dad called me back. He said that if I thought I could get it to run, even shaking, I should take it over to the mechanics, and he'd get me from there after he dropped Mom off at work. So I went back out to the car, put the key in the ignition, and turned it, and the car turned over and started. It was still shaking, but not quite as badly as before. So I took a turn around the neighborhood to see if it would drive ok, and since it did, and seemed to be calming down further despite the check engine light being on, I decided to give driving home a shot.

So, I got from Columbus to my little town without too many scary moments, had my meeting at work, and took the car down to the local mechanic shop and said, essentially, "Car broke. Please fix." They called me this afternoon with their verdict: it needs an oil change (which i knew, and had asked them to go on and do while they were at it), new plugs and wires, new accessory belts and a new timing belt, and I think there may have been something to do with the water pump- my heart was going a little fast by then and I may have blanked on a couple of the details. The grand total for all of this is a little over $1000. I closed my eyes a minute, took a deep breath, and told them to go on and fix everything, even though it meant I wouldn't get the car back until Wednesday at the earliest (holiday. And I think they have to order a part, too). Oh, and can I say that I'm really glad this happened in the last week of December as opposed to the first week of January, so I can ascribe it to The Year That Really Just Didn't Work Out Very Well as opposed to The Next Year, Which Had Really Ought To Be Better Than Last Year, Please, God? Yeah.

So, someone gave me a ride home because it was raining, and I called Daddy and told him what was wrong and that I'd said to fix it and he said he thought that was a good call (my car is at the age where you have to start considering how much money you really want to put into it, because the car's financial value is basically zero. Its *personal* value is pretty immense, given that it's my car and it's paid for). And so I got off the phone and started playing with numbers. I don't have $1000. That's more than I even make in a month. I do have $500, and can probably squeeze another hundred or so out of my checking account by trimming the budget for this pay period a bit, but the rest is going to have to go on a credit card, which I'd prefer not to do, but well, life's not fair in the big city and sometimes you've just gotta go on with it. But it occurred to me that this is one of those VISTA experiences where you really kind of get what poverty means. Not destitute poverty, but that minimum wage, don't quite have enough to always go around, but you're hanging in there, poverty. My poverty is voluntary, and I know that if I can just get the car to hang in there for another 18 months, or 2 years, I can get a new car. Believe me, if I didn't know that for pretty much a fact, I would have been a lot more panicked this afternoon (actually, I'm pretty proud that I was as calm as I was). I'm used to living on not that much, but it really only does take one big thing to throw everything into a spiral. The ability to be inconvenienced, but basically all right, if something like a major car repair is unexpectedly necessary is something that I think a lot of people might take for granted. I really kind of didn't even before this (although it meant I needed a bail out more often than not), but now I really won't.