Check Yourself

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Proverbs 11, Verse 9

"Evil words destroy, Godly skill rebuilds."

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CHIP OF WISDOM:

Think there's no such thing as "evil words"?

Think again, sport.  

I bought my 2001 Volvo V-70XC station wagon on October 25th.  It's November 14th, and tonight marks the third time those fuckery little words showed up on my instrument cluster.  

ClusterFUCK!

FUCK!!!!

What the FUCK?!!!!!

Now, I don't want to panic or start obsessively rubbing gravel and bits of glass into my eyes and prostrating myself before the Swedish God of Oxygen Sensors, but I'm frightened, I'M VERY VERY FRIGHTENED!

As is the case with this blog entry, I don't know where this little vehicular tale is going to end.  When I purchased this car, it had just a hair under 90,000 miles on it, which is extraordinary for a vehicle that old.  On eBay, you see Volvos of this vintage for sale with two hundred thousand, two hundred fifty thousand, there's one or two with over three hundred thousand miles on the odometer.  So, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable that, when I purchased this car I had visions of us staying together for an appreciable length of time.  I envisioned my bony ass and my scoliosis-laden back pairing up with that sculpted, heated, sumptuously and cowliciously-appointed leather seat to be a supullent, sexcellent marriage.  

Now, I'm filled with doubt.  Gout.  It's spouting out of my grout.  And so I sit here and pout, and you know what about.

About evil words.  Those two orange, evil words.  

You don't typically think of orange as an evil color, a color of the devil.  Orange is the color of autumn, of clementines, of Fiskars pinking shears.  Sorry-- my wife sews.  Hey, and speaking of my wife: orange is her favorite color.

How the hell could orange be evil if my pretty buddy loves orange?  

And yet, there it is:

  

Again.  For the third time.  First time was $310.  The dealership I bought the car from paid for that repair.

Phew. 

Less than a week later, it was $435.  That was on me.

ZING!

Now?  Who knows?  It's an expensive Swedish car.  The possibilities are limitless.  Maybe it needs a new thrånkenheuser.  Or a rotating flaçsêknävs.  Could be it needs its skleàâng adjusted.  Your Ikea-hued guess is as good as mine.  I just don't want the car to turn all Christine on me.  Because, if that lovely hunk of sheet metal parked outside is indeed going to rob me blind and rape me bloody, if those evil, evil fuckety-fuck-fuck words are going to come back to haunt me every two or three weeks or so, it's going to be a painful ride for both of us.  

That's right: both of us.

    

This is how I volvo

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 11, Verse 2

"Proud men end in shame,

but the meek become wise."

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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.