Id, Ego, Superego, Automobile
Id, Ego, Superego, Automobile My car died last weekend. It was a quiet death, sudden though not unexpected—she had given me 149,941 glorious, palindromic miles; but I miss her just the same....
...I said...
...Just like on the A-Team...
...Late in my junior year of college, a friend asked to borrow my car to drive to an interview at the Project for the Republican Future in Washington...
...Did you blow out a tire...
...Jonathan V. Last...
...I was too shocked to speak, but I could listen, and in the course of the next ten minutes, he explained it all...
...I honestly don't have them," I explained...
...my Oldsmobile with a dent above the passenger rear tirewell...
...Then that Oldsmobile, my beloved first car, exploded...
...He calmly walked back, grabbed his things from the passenger seat, and stepped away a few paces...
...All sorts of horrible images flew through my mind: my Olds-mobile with its front bumper dangling from the body, held by a few colored wires...
...They kept demanding I return my license plates...
...People who grow up in the city don't have cars...
...And normally when people exaggerate, I thought, the problem isn't that serious...
...As in the muffler fell out or the engine stalled...
...He had been driving home on I-95 when he heard a loud pop, followed by a steady stream of smoke from the front end of the car...
...Great...
...Jonathan," he said, "it blew up...
...Well, uh, yeah . . . ," he answered nervously...
...I said...
...My car blew up...
...A mechanic from a service station just off the next exit showed up and explained to my friend proudly that he had called the fire department when he "seen the pillar of thick black smoke all the way from my garage...
...Blew up," he said quietly...
...But suburbanites are just the right distance apart: too far to walk, and near enough to make driving easy...
...Man is a social animal, and being carless is distressing stuff...
...The final battle with the DMV came almost two months after my car had passed on...
...Actually, I more than miss her—I'm terrified at the prospect of life without an automobile...
...He pulled over and got out to take a look at the engine, but before he could open the hood, he saw orange flames lick out from the underbelly...
...It was a difficult time for me...
...What happened...
...People in the country live so far from everything that getting there and back is a chore...
...So where'd you park the car...
...To the city, to the movies, to the 7-11 for milk...
...Sure," I said, smiling...
...There has," he said deliberately, "been a problem...
...He said he "just knew something was exploding on the freeway...
...Tires are fine, I can replace a tire...
...Relieved, I laughed...
...Just bring her back in one piece...
...half the places they go are a stone's throw away, parking is a nuisance, and they can always take the bus or subway...
...My friend was worked up...
...It blew up...
...Coping with the loss was hard enough, but, worse, the corpse of my car was waiting for me to identify in an automotive morgue in Maryland...
...What if, I thought with a gasp, the lovely brown car that took me to my prom were to wind up disfigured by one of those dreadful replacement body panels whose color doesn't even approximate a match...
...Within minutes, two fire-engines arrived on the scene and hosed her down...
...When the tow truck rolled carefully into the parking garage at the mall last Sunday to carry my dear departed away, I had a flashback to four years ago, when my first was taken from me...
...I'm a child of the suburbs, and we, as a breed, are distinct from city dwellers and farm folk...
...As in fire trucks and explosions...
...Cars don't blow up," she snapped...
...But I got the internship," my friend added wanly...
...We have to have cars, because without them, we're cut off from humanity...
...Unfortunately, this isn't the first time I've suffered a car loss...
...Cars don't blow up, so he must be exaggerating...
...as an economist friend of mine would say, their utility-per-mile ratio is low, so their interactions with automobiles are major events...
...So," I asked eagerly, "did you get the internship...
...We have to have those plates before you can register your new car," a squat woman wheezed at me with a voice that only Philip Morris could love...
...You would think so," I answered, "wouldn't you...
...A few hours later the phone rang...
...What do you mean it blew up...
...Okay," I said, steadying myself, "what happened...
...Then, adding insult to injury, the New Jersey DMV spent weeks arguing with me...
...So we drive everywhere...
...We spend so much time with our cars that they're the fourth part of our psyches: id, ego, superego, and automobile...
Vol. 3 • December 1997 • No. 14
