I got a new car last year. Well, okay, new is a stretch. Allow me to rephrase: it was younger than I am, which, as far as I was concerned, was pretty good. I had decided to get it because, even though it was a 1994 Buick Park Avenue, it only had 87,000 miles on it and was selling for $1,500.

My Jeep at the time (her name was Kalee) needed a $1,000 axle repair, and so this seemed like the smart thing to do. There are few things in my life I regret more than this decision.

I bought the car, named her Chloe, and drove her off the lot. That’s when I discovered a slight problem. It seemed to understand and apply the physics behind moving forward, but it was less skilled at stopping upon command.

This is one of those things that you sort of want to discover before you start moving.

I got the brake problem fixed, and then took the car out on a trip to Connecticut.

Now, I’m not sure there’s ever a good time to discover that your gas tank leaks, but I can tell you that a particularly bad time to find this out is on a 600 mile round trip. There were Hummers on the road that were getting better mileage than my car was. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been shocked if an aircraft carrier was doing better than I was.

In any case, I got the gas tank fixed as well. This didn’t particularly improve my mileage; I still only get between 10 and 15 miles a gallon. My car does do a lot of things I don’t ask it too, though. It locks doors, turns on radios, starts the heater – at this point I just kind of expect that I will come out one morning to find out that it has eloped with my roommate’s Subaru.

I also had to take tires off of this vehicle three times for various reasons, and the nuts finally stripped on them. This took me the better part of three hours and several trips to a hardware store to fix. By the time I was done, the entire neighborhood had learned new words. (My father taught me that an elaborate vocabulary of curses was the most important tool that you can have while working on a car.)

I want Kalee back.

Holden Fenner is a junior at the School of Information Studies. He is thrilled about Halloween, but asks that the man who wore the monkey costume last year take it off sometime before early December this time around. Holden can be reached at htfenner@syr.edu.

Published on October 29, 2008 at 12:00 pm