Old and New

I am currently, for the first time in my life, the owner of a brand new car. Actually, it’s now a few months old and has several thousand miles on it, thanks in part to a cross-country move shortly after it came into my possession, but I think it still counts as new. It replaced a 1997 Honda Civic that had belonged to my mom before it became the “college car” when I was the only member of the family in college (except one semester when my brother was a college freshman, but he never really used the car anyway).

The Civic served me well, but I was so dazzled by the shimmery newness of my Mazda that it took me a month or two to realize how much I missed my old car. Now lest I appear ungrateful, I’ll say right here that I love my new car. It’s much sportier than the Civic, for one. And the LCD screen says hello to me when I turn on the ignition. It’s got a huge glove compartment, a functional CD player, extra buttons on the dashboard so that people can think I have satellite radio and a 6-disc changer (even though I don’t), lumbar support for the driver’s seat, lots of child safety features in case I happen to get married and have kids before the car dies, a classy blue dashboard lighting system, and (I’m sure) plenty of less gimmicky features that don’t impress me nearly as much only because I don’t even begin to understand them. Oh yes, and I have at least a couple guys who are quite enamored by my car (if not by me).

But you know, I was surprisingly attached to the Civic. I’m only now realizing that all the little nuisances were actually sort of…endearing. The CD player that ate burned CDs (and I probably compounded the problem by fishing the CDs out with whatever tool I had on hand). The cigarette lighter that dangled by a wire, but still managed to fulfill its purpose by successfully charging various electronic devices. The long scratch across my windshield from when I installed my windshield wipers incorrectly and then left them there, during the rainy season, for a month or two. The faded paint on the roof from being left out in the sun of Utah summers and the snow of Provo winters for four years, and from surviving the worst blizzard in one hundred years of Washington D.C. weather. The scratches on the trunk from my bicycle rack. The still-unidentified stain on the front seat. The floor mat that would never stay in place.

As I was preparing to sell the car, I made a mental list of all the little dents and quirks that I’d have to make known to a potential buyer, as well as all the good they’d be getting out of the deal—the car had been fantastically reliable through four years of college, one year of half hour commutes, and thousands of miles worth or road trips. Of course I was proud of all the benefits my little Civic had to offer its new owner, but looking back I think that I was also proud of all the little flaws. That was its personality. Whoever bought the car would have to appreciate that personality. Gratefully, my Civic now has a home in Bloomington, Indiana (the place of my birth, incidentally) with an owner who seems to love the car as much as I did. I’m sure it’s happy, but I miss it. The Mazda may have a flawless paint job and a CD player that plays even burned CDs, but its personality is just a little…bland.

I’m working on it. I’ll be taking it to Buffalo, NY, this week to visit a friend for Thanksgiving and I hope that by spending some quality time together on the road, alone, we’ll get to know each other. We’ll listen to music, and I’ll probably sing along. We’ll stop and see Niagara falls, from the Canada side on the way in and the New York side on the way back. If we’re lucky we’ll get stuck in a spate of bad weather and learn patience with each other. It’ll be a step in the right direction, at least, and hopefully in a few years when it’s been through its first major repair job, obtained its first minor dent (maybe because my parallel parking luck runs out), manifests its first electronic glitch, and finally starts to show its age, I’ll be able to look back and say, yes, I really do love my car.

I also need to name it. I think that will help. I was reminded the other day that I never named my Civic—by the time I realized it deserved a name, I knew it so well that nothing ever quite fit. I’ve decided that I’m not going to let that happen with the Mazda. I may not know it very well yet, but it still deserves a name. The problem is that I’m not very good at giving names to inanimate objects. A friend of mine named her car Sophie and it just works. I asked her how she managed to find such a perfect name and she shrugged and told me, “It just came to me.” That’s not much help. It took me three months and about fifty suggestions from my math education classmates before I finally found an appropriate name for my computer, and although it’s grown into its name (Dimitri) I still don’t actually call it by name. On my way home from church today, since I wasn’t giving anyone a ride, I ran through dozens of possible names for my Mazda. I repeated some of them aloud several times, and a couple were close but not quite. The most promising name also just happened to be the name of my home teacher and that allowed for too many possible complications. The second most promising name, and the one I’m currently leaning towards, doesn’t roll easily off the tongue (unless you sing it—and I won’t go into much detail about why I know this).

I am determined to have a name for my car before the road trip. I think it will help strengthen the relationship. So if you have any suggestions, I’m open to hearing them.