This is how I volvo

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 11, Verse 2

"Proud men end in shame,

but the meek become wise."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I'm doing it again.

Apologizing.

Apologizing, for my car.

And I hate it, but I feel compelled to do it.  It comes up and out of me like vomit that sears my throat and my nostrils, but it's unstoppable.  It's propelled up my esophagus by guilt and pushed out of my oral cavity by embarrassment and fear of being judged.

The way I judge others.  The way I judge.

But people are judging me.

Aren't they?

"Oh!  You drive a Vol-vo?"

They like to put the emphasis on the first syllable.  VOL-vo.  

If you say "Volvo" enough times, it starts to sound stupid, like any word.  I didn't know what "Volvo" meant, so I looked it up.  The internet told me.

Volvo means "I roll" in Swedish.

A few years ago, I owned a 2002 Volvo S-40.  It was a very nice car.  It had beige leather seats and fake wood trim everywhere and it had ass-warmers.  And I loved the car from the moment I sat behind the wheel, all through the ride home, until the first acquaintance I knew saw it and said, "Oh!  A Vol-vo!"  And I instantly knew that I did not deserve to be driving this car.  

For the first time in my life, I had committed the sin of purchasing a car that was above my station.  If you think that America doesn't have a rigid class system like England or even a caste system like India, just try to earn $30,000 a year and by an old luxury car.  People will put you in your place, without meaning to, without trying to be unkind, without even thinking about it.  It'll just happen.

I had owned a Volvo prior to the S-40.  When I was sixteen, I drove a 1989 Volvo 240-DL.  You know, the time machine that looks like it could have been made in 1954 or 1967 or 1975 or 1989.  Nobody made me feel weird or uncomfortable about driving it, because it was Volvo's entry level car, and it had blue cloth seats and maybe four buttons on the dashboard.  I don't remember whether it had heated seats, but I doubt it.  It was about as spartan and basic as it got-- Volvo's version of the original Beetle.  An underpowered, no-frills people mover.  But, unlike the original Beetle, it was a safe underpowered, no-frills people mover.  And I guess the fact that we bought it for $2,300 and that nobody I knew when I was sixteen knew enough about cars to know that Volvo was a big deal, plus the fact that I went to school in a very affluent area where all the kids drove BMWs and Lexuses and the teachers came to work in rusted out Chevettes and Sentras probably had something to do with it, too.  My Volvo 240-DL blended in anonymously.  

And now, all these years later, I'm on my third Volvo.  A 2001 Volvo V-70 AWD.  When it was new, it cost nearly $40,000.  With the trade I offered, I got it for $1,300.  Not bad.  It was driven less than an average of 7,000 miles a year and it's gorgeous.  And I love it.  

But it embarrasses me.  Or, I'm embarrassed by it.  It's too good for me, or I'm not good enough for it.  

When people see it and they say, "Oh!  You drive a Vol-vo!"  I am very quick to jump in and say, "Well, an old Volvo."  For good measure, sometimes I'll add, "It's thirteen years old," or, for added dramatic effect, "you know I was still in college when that car was built!"  Or, to ameliorate the person's good image of the car, I'll subtlety disrespect it.

"Yea, it's beautiful, but the gas mileage is pretty terrible."

But I'm really just dissing myself.  It's my poor self-esteem talking.  Why should I deserve to drive a car like that?  What gives me the right?  Leather seats?  Ass-warmers?  A moon-roof?  More fake-wood than I can shake a fake stick at?  A V-6 engine (my first V-6 in years), all-wheel-drive?  Come on-- who am I?  A Rockafella?

No.  I'm just a skinny little shit who found a good deal and he jumped on it.  And I try to enjoy it and, privately, I can.  When I'm alone behind the wheel or I catch a glimpse of it parked outside, I have to admit, I like it.  I like it very much.  One day, when we've been through enough together, I might even love it.  But, when I'm in the presence of someone else, I can't help but feel intensely self-conscious about it.  Like I'm wearing a huge, gaudy gold necklace with the Volvo symbol around my neck everywhere I go.  

And I want to just enjoy it all the time.  Because, one day, it'll be gone.  And I'll miss it.  I'll miss the exaggerated stitching on the seats and the roar of that powerful Swedish engine.  One day, I'll be sitting on a seat that's deficient, less satisfying, less glorious and scoliosis-calming.

But, for now, this is how I roll.  And I have to learn to be okay with that, no matter who's around.

By the way, her name is "Petra."  Say "hi" to the people, Petra.  

Slightly Unnecessary Vehicle

CHIP OF WISDOM:

"A man without self-control is as defenseless as a city with broken-down walls."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I am dangerous.

I ought to be locked up.

Seclusion.

The tank.

The hole.

Put me away.

Let me tell you something: if I can convince my wife that we need to spend serious amounts of money on something-- anything-- then I am good, I am very, very good, and, therefore, ergo, I am bad, I am very, very bad, and ought to be punished.  

Locked away.

Goodbye, key!

Feed me through the bars.  

Watch your little piggers, though.

This fucker bites.

-------------------------------------

While our children were in utero, my wife and I had one last hurrah.  A vacation for soon-to-be lost souls.  A fling, a flitting journey to an unfamiliar (to us) land.  We were going to go to Canada, but we decided that wasn't far enough.  So we settled on Ireland.  I'm an Anglophile, she's already been to England, so that's kind of how we decided.  That's how these things happen sometimes, you know.  

Describing the trip itself, I think, is largely pointless now.  There were lots of sheep, and sweaty, Australians stinking of alcohol, there were breakfasts of dubious virtue and provenance, and funny street signs and license plates.  It was Ireland.  We made lots of tea in our various, quirky hotel rooms and I got a brochure for the Nissan Micra, which I fell in love with, and which will never be brought to this country because it's far too small, far too fuel efficient, and far too cute.

Speaking of cars in Ireland, though, what my wife and I saw there comforted us.  See, waiting back at home for us we had two vehicles: a 2009 Honda Fit (small but remarkably ergonomic) and a 2002 Volvo S-40 (small and remarkably less so).  We were doing our fair share of freaking out in those days knowing that two babies were coming and our driveway (we don't actually have a driveway) was shockingly bereft of a station wagon (remember those?), a SUV, or a minivan.  

"Families with twins can't live without one [or all three] of those vehicular soul-killers," we thought.

But, the funny thing was, in Ireland, we were taught a valuable lesson by our sensible European neighbors.  Everywhere we walked-- towards the National Botanical Gardens in Glasnevin, or to some cool Turkish restaurant in Cork, we saw, parked and in motion, impossibly tiny cars, containing two car seats.  

Oh, we thought.  

Right.

Fears were set at ease.  The children were born on a frigid December night, and were transported home in my Volvo S-40.  My wife and I were safely ensconced among six undeployed (but ready and waiting) airbags and our tussies grilled by two delicious ass-warmers nestled under two unfathomably sumptuous beige leather seats, and our children were snug as two pints of Guinness in the back, going we we we, all the way home.

And a few months went by.  Half a year, to be exact.

Then, something snapped in my head.   

This car isn't big enough.  

This car is too old.  

We need something bigger.

We need something newer.

I had forgotten all the lessons we'd learned in Ireland, (except for the one about not eating baked beans before eight o'clock in the morning), and off I was, going off, acting nuts, looking at SUVs online, and working my wife.

I worked her like a suspect in The Box.  

Eventually, my wife, practical, sensible, frugal, conservative, disapproving, skeptical and cautious, relented.

She even started to believe it was a good idea.  Maybe that's pushing it, but she saw the idea had merits.  Which, I'm not going to lie, it did.  But, I'm also not going to lie: we could have kept the Volvo and been fine.  People in Ireland do it.

But, no.

I sold the Volvo, to a friend of hers from college-- ON FACEBOOK FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, and then I spent a lot more money, you know, OUR money, on a used CR-V that is, to quote my wife, "spartan".  

No leather.

No tussie warmers.

No power seat.

No faux wood on the dash and the shifter.

And, of course, none of those things mean anything-- you know, until you don't have them anymore.  It has plenty of things the Volvo didn't have, of course-- like a thousand or so extra cubic feet of storage space, and 4-wheel drive, which comes in handy when you work at a place that pretends you are "essential personnel" (it's fun to pretend, isn't it?) during things like blizzards and hurricanes, and, when the babies are both flipping out, my wife can actually fit in between their two gargantuan car seats and anesthetize them with snacks or, on rare occasions, her boobs.  

Admittedly, can't do that in an eleven year old S-40.  

I miss that car, predominantly on long trips, where those succulent Swedish cowhides made you feel like you were riding astride the silken back of a lipstick lesbian slowly undulating against a bearskin rug.  (I should have gone into advertising.)  And, as greatly feared benchmarks of the coming years approach, I find myself pining for those several thousand dollars that went jumping into the back pocket of a Honda salesman in Northeast Philly.  Our tiny house requires that we finish the basement so that both of our children can have a bedroom of their own sometime in the next two years.  

"We're going to have to take out a loan for that, right?" I asked my wife a couple nights ago, lying awake, terror-stricken, in bed.

"Yup," she said.

I did that.  Me.  My choice.  My SUV.  Mine.

And as it lustily consumed cripplingly expensive fuel, and as my left butt-cheek falls asleep on car rides that last longer than half-an-hour, I marvel quietly at my frightening persuasive qualities.  

It scares me.  Make it stop.  

I haven't ruined our family financially, by any means, but I haven't done us any fab favors, either.  It's funny-- one of the great advantages of the CR-V showed itself on July 4th, when my wife and I had my inlaws come over and babysit while she and I went to the fireworks.  Not wanting to be around, you know, people, we parked in a supermarket parking lot and climbed up onto the roof of the car and spread out languidly on our butts propped up on our elbows and watched the dazzling colors and the booming bangs from our own personal observation deck.  A couple days later, while walking to the car in the morning, I noticed that our combined weight, nominal though it is, had caved in the CR-V's roof.  

Well that's just fine, I thought to myself.  Now even the black eye has a black eye.