Perpetual Smile

My phone vibrated against the desk. I shoved my bluetooth — that’s Mr. Bluetooth to you — into my ear and pressed the button, simultaneously checking my phone to see who was calling. My BlackBerry’s screen greeted my with my Dad’s Facebook photo.

“Hello,” I said, clicking at my screen.

“I’m not gonna get you in trouble, am I?”

“No,” I said. I glanced at the time on my desktop toolbar.

My dad seemed to hesitate, and then he asked the question that I am supposed to be always asking: “Can I borrow your car?”

His van had bit the dust a week or so ago, and he had bought a used car to replace it. Unfortunately, the Altima he’d bought turned out to be a lemon. He’s been taking my Ellie every so often to go do jobs — he’s an oversized load escort — until he can find something else because he doesn’t trust the Altima. Every so often he’ll ask or, like a couple of days ago, he’ll just borrow her for quick errands. (I’ve thought about using this all as leverage. Trust me. I’m just waiting for the right opportunity.)

“Sure,” I agreed. He explained that he would drop his car off in the parking lot at my job and take my car from there. All I had to do was give my building’s receptionist the license plate so that the Altima didn’t end up mistakenly being towed. No problem. Besides getting to drive something else, I was getting gas out of the deal.

After work I walked the block to my parking lot and got into the Altima. “Could have at least cracked me a window, Dad,” I said to the inside of the car. I lifted the mat and rooted around for the key. “Ah-ha!” As I put it into the ignition, I braced myself for the possibility of it not starting (its neutral safety switch is busted, just like Lisa Mazda‘s was). It started just fine, and I glanced up to start backing out. No rearview mirror. “Aw, Dad!” I checked my side mirrors and looked behind me. Fine. I could do this. No big deal.

I put the car into reverse and started backing out. BOOM. BOOOM. BOOOOOM. Where was that awful too-high bass sound coming from? Me? It was coming from me! Or, the Altima, actually. A second later I totally forgot about the sound as I began backing out, hoping that the side mirrors weren’t hexed and that I wouldn’t end up bashing into one of my coworker’s cars. (You never know. It could happen. Really.)

All backed out and ready to go, I started to leave the parking lot. BOOM. BOOOOM. BOOOM-BOOOM. “Oh my god,” I thought. “It sounds like a GIT car!”

Yep. I had the radio’s volume almost all the way down and yet it sounded like I had one of those bass booster thingamabobs in my trunk. As I sat at a red light, the entire car was shaking, as if I were sitting in one of those massage chairs at the mall.

The whole ride home, I thought for certain that it would die on me. Or that someone behind me might get pissed at my slowness. Or that the brakes might fail and that I would go sliding into another car. Or maybe a cop would pull me over because of the little ghetto car’s looks.

Instead, everyone ignored me. For once, no one rode my ass — even though I drove slower than ever! (They must have thought I was one of them, due to the BOOM BOOM-BOOM BOOM.) I drove past two cops and they didn’t so much as blink at me. And best of all? No one died. Hooray.

“No wonder you didn’t want to drive this thing,” I said to Dad when he called me to make sure I got home okay. It occurred to me then that he might have thought I wouldn’t make it home alive in that thing, either!

Leave a comment and tell me: What’s the worst car you’ve ever driven? (Bonus points if you can tell me where I got the title of this post from!)