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Home Opinion

Automotives a foreign language?

byRYAN PRICE
February 16, 2011
in Opinion, Top News
0 0
2

Price is a sophomore broadcast journalism and rhetoric major and can be contacted at ryan.price@drake.edu

The idea of a world like that depicted in “The Matrix” seriously scares me. I never want a cord to be connected to my head to teach me whole subject matters, with one notable exception.

If I could connect a cord to the back of my head and download everything I need to know about my rusty 2001 Chevrolet Blazer, I would take the red pill in a heartbeat.

Seriously, I never feel as wholly incompetent as I do while working with my car.

When I go into a shop for an oil change, the etiquette is as foreign to me as getting a pedicure at a Parisian salon.

Do I pull my car up to the back and leave it there? Do I sit in the car? Do I lay on the horn? How many coffees can I have sitting in the waiting room? Do I wash in between my toes before the pedi?

And if I don’t even know how to park my car for an oil change, how am I supposed to know what the hell a carburetor is? If only I had the time and dedication to learn more.

When most of our parents went to school, there was a whole clique called the “gear heads” who worked with their cars all the time. My dad was a proud gear head, and I still have his shirt from his years working at an auto shop that says “Price” on it.

I want to know where these gear heads went. Maybe hipsters have replaced them, I don’t know. They’d be good friends to have, though.

That way, when I go to Drake Garage and they tell me I need to drop $200 of my scarce money on a “serpentine belt,” I can call my buddy up and ask why I need a boa constrictor under my hood.

When I go to Best Buy to fix/replace my television, I don’t need to leave with a microwave, coffee maker and Bluetooth headset.

But for some reason, when I go to the auto shop for a $30 oil change, I always leave calling my parents and telling them how much I love them while asking for a $1,200 wire transfer.

I’m either being scammed, or my Blazer is actually a decrepit antique. Probably both.

My sister owned a horse named Bailey for a while and she was an expensive, temperamental, moody steed.

Whenever she wanted to take a friend out trail riding in Minnesota, Bailey would never come to her beckoning.

She had to feed her several times a day and brush her. To merely store her oversized pony in a barn cost her thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile, parking permits are hundreds of dollars for our cars, and if I want my car to work properly, it seems like I need to caress it gently and whisper sweet nothings into the muffler.

I guess some things don’t change.

Wagons broke down on the Oregon Trail, and my Blazer didn’t start last week when I had an important interview in 20 minutes.
Oh, and the worst part about knowing nothing about cars is the crap we unknowing men get because of it. Just because I can’t figure out what a spark plug is doesn’t mean my manhood is any smaller.

Real football players don’t need to know how to make and lace a football. Real chefs don’t need to know how to plant and harvest crops. Real drivers just need to know how to drive.

So, take solace my fellow auto-ignorant guys. Just because we don’t know the difference between a windshield wiper and a transmission doesn’t mean we’re any less man.

And until someone offers me the red pill, I’ll just thank the car gods for AAA.

Tags: Life: Living it from Experience

RYAN PRICE

Next Post

Letter to the Editor: Faith and Marriage

Comments 2

  1. ? says:
    10 years ago

    What was this article supposed to be addressing? I guess if it was the author’s complete incompetence with cars, really you don’t know what a sparkplug is, then good work. What happened to informative journalism? Perhaps if you went to the Drake garage and pointed out certain flaws in their pricing and gave alternative places to take your car, that would have been useful. Instead I just wasted minutes of my life learning that your sister has a horse and she pays thousands of idiotic dollars to ride it. I want those minutes back…

  2. Samantha Haas says:
    10 years ago

    Ryan,
    A well-written, and I thought, quite funny article. Also, though I’m not a guy who doesn’t know anything about cars, I am a girl who doesn’t, and I appreciate the sentiment of the article. It’s too bad everyone didn’t get the chance to enjoy this fun read. Or have the guts to put their name on their comments 🙂

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