Superficial Matters

I test-drove my current dream car yesterday, 99.9% for fun. I’ve been thinking about it, a lot, for a long time. It was very nice. Then I got into my old PriusV and realized I still really love my car. It’s comfortable. It drives great for the way I want to drive, like a mom carrying precious cargo. And it’s got some life in it still. But I haven’t maintained the exterior at all. It’s scratched up and dented. It’s missing the cover for a rear taillight. And the black rubber seal thingy on the trunk door came dislodged somehow and so it generally pooks out of the back like a hernia, resting on the severely scraped rear bumper, which isn’t a bumper at all but a piece of plastic that scratches and crumples with the slightest contact it would seem. And it’s had some contacts.

I own the car, and I’ve intended to keep it until it dies. So I’ve told myself there is no justification for fixing these minor scrapes and bumps and lumps. And okay that one kinda large dent on the side from where I backed out of our driveway and as I cut the car to the right for my three-point turn the side made contact with a semi-invisible big silver metal pole sticking out the back of a parked truck. What are the odds on that, I ask you?

I’m a good driver, I am. But I’m not a great parker or un-parker, which is when all of my mishaps have occurred. It’s pretty remarkable the amount of cumulative damage a car can endure in the under five-mile-an-hour zone.

So I think that’s another reason why I haven’t fixed my car is I’ve assumed I’ll just dent it up again so what’s the point? Kinda like making a bed, it’s never made a ton of sense to me. But I do make the bed, not every day, but quite regularly, because it feels good to get into a made bed and it looks kind of nice. And I’m considering fixing my car because I love my car and it would feel good to get into a fixed one.

Then there’s the money stuff which is I really don’t want to spend money on fixing the car when it seems so … superficial. I told myself it was badass to drive a dented car.

Like when I lived in LA and I drove this awesome black convertible with a fairly pronounced dent right in the front middle for years because the first week I had it I hit the pole in the front of my parking spot pulling in and decided the dent would make me look a little tougher on the road.

Like, “Heya shiny beemer mon, yeah you’re gonna let me in.” Like, “I own the road because I don’t care that much if you hit me.”

That’s not really the energy I’m trying to put out there these days. So I’m thinking about fixing my old car, maybe just that hanging down black rubber seal part for now. I’m gonna keep going.