Ode to a car: Love among the sparkplugs

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Fear-fueled relationship
I say this largely because I have no idea how my, or any, car works. As long as I can flip open the adorable little compartments below the dashboard and roaring things happen when I turn the key, I’m happy. This is probably why I treat whatever I drive with a sense of fear-fueled respect; I figure that as long as I pet the dashboard and murmur apologies when I drive full-bore over a parking lot curb, all is forgiven and the tires shall remain inflated until evil interlopers dictate otherwise.

Many of us feel this way, perhaps, because as long as we are in our cars, we’re in our own portable kingdoms. You are Lord of the Passat! You shall pick your nose and sing along with Wayne Newton! Alone on the highway, we are our fullest selves, and as long as we clean out the glove compartment at the end of the night, our cars keep our secrets. Offending serfs are honked at, here within your fiefdom, and if you want to — not that you’re going to, the point is that you can if you want — you and your trusty four-banger steed can drive directly past the office, over your boss and off to Colorado to open a combination ski resort and “ALF” memorabilia museum.

That same International Carwash Association study tells us that 25 percent of us got our first “I love you” in a car, and, perhaps not unrelated, four percent of us were born in a car, with another four percent named after a car, which… might be taking it a bit far. I image that a child named Dodge Ram would have an ironically difficult time finding a personalized bike license plate.

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Intertwined in our lives as they are, they’re rather on the out list right now, our cars, with their gas guzzling and their highway-clogging. Al Gore would like you to chuck yours. Would you? Toss over your friend, your fortress, your wallet drag, in exchange for a presumably cleaner planet for generations to come?

Naaaaaaaah. You just got the radio settings where you want them.

Teacher and freelance writer Mary Beth Ellis runs BlondeChampagne.com. She and her watertight Toyota Corolla live happily in central Florida. Her contribution to Random House’s “Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Authors: The Best New Voices of 2006” will appear in a pretentious bookstore near you in late August.

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